Ten presidents of the United States have made presidential visits to North Africa. The first trips by a sitting president to countries in North Africa were those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and were an offshoot of Allied diplomatic interactions during World War II. Of the five countries in the region, only Libya has not yet been visited by an American president.
Table of visits PresidentDatesCountry or territoryLocationsKey detailsFranklin D. RooseveltCasablancaAttended Casablanca Conference with British prime minister Winston Churchill. French AlgeriaOranDisembarked.TunisOvernight stop.Cairo Attended First Cairo Conference with British prime minister Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek.Attended Second Cairo Conference with British prime minister Churchill and Turkish president İsmet İnönü. TunisConferred with General Dwight Eisenhower.Great Bitter Lake, Suez Canal, AlexandriaMet with King Farouk, Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Saudi Arabian king Ibn Saud, and British prime minister Churchill. French AlgeriaAlgiersBriefed U.S. ambassadors to the United Kingdom, France, and Italy on the Yalta Conference.Dwight D. EisenhowerTunisMet with President Habib Bourguiba.CasablancaMet with King Mohammed V.Richard M. NixonCairo, AlexandriaMet with President Anwar Sadat.Jimmy CarterAswanMet with President Sadat and German chancellor Helmut Schmidt.Cairo, Alexandria, GizaState visit; met with President Sadat and addressed the People's Assembly.CairoMet with President Sadat.George H. W. BushDiscussed the Persian Gulf crisis with President Hosni Mubarak.Bill ClintonMet with President Mubarak and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat.Sharm el-SheikhAttended the Summit of the Peacemakers.RabatAttended the funeral of King Hassan II; met with Palestinian National Authority president Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.CairoBriefed President Mubarak on the Middle East Peace Process.Sharm el-SheikhAttended Israeli-Palestinian Summit Meeting.George W. BushAttended "Red Sea Summit" with the leaders of Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and with Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas.Met with President Mubarak.Met with President Mubarak, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Palestinian National Authority president Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. Addressed the World Economic Forum.Barack ObamaCairoMet with President Mubarak and delivered and address at Cairo University.Joe BidenSharm el-SheikhMet with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Attended the COP27 at Tonino Lamborghini International Convention Center.Donald TrumpAttended a Middle East Peace Ceremony in order to finalize a Gaza hostages-for-ceasefire deal.
Visits by former presidents Ulysses S. Grant visited Alexandria, Egypt, met with Khedive Isma'il Pasha, sailed up the Nile to tour the Valley of the Kings, and traveled by train down the length of the Suez Canal in 1878, during a post-presidency world tour. Richard Nixon (without official State Department credentials) attended the funeral of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, former shah of Iran, in Cairo, July 29, 1980. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were among the dignitaries representing the United States at the funeral of Egyptian president Sadat in Cairo, October 10, 1981.
See also Algeria–United States relations Egypt–United States relations Libya–United States relations Morocco–United States relations Tunisia–United States relations Foreign policy of the United States Foreign relations of the United States
References