But he was greeted at home by new headlines about Princess Diana's death, and speculation about whether he also joined his girlfriend on safari in Botswana.
Harry went off to Africa 10 days ago to support the efforts of the Halo Trust, his mother's anti-landmine charity that she herself visited shortly before her death in a Paris car crash in 1997.
He came home to the news, two weeks before the 16th anniversary of her death, that Scotland Yard is investigating the crash again, after receiving "new information" that she might have been murdered by a member of the British military.
The long-accepted verdict on the cause of her death, after three previous investigations, is that it was an accident involving drunken driving, speeding and failure to use seat belts.
Neither Harry nor his brother, Prince William, are saying anything about this latest inquiry, as has been their policy for 16 years.
Nor is Harry, 28, talking about whether his latest trip to Africa also involved a safari in Botswana with a party that included his latest girlfriend, dance student Cressida Bonas, 24, and his cousin Princess Eugenie and her boyfriend.
Harry's trip to Angola was not announced beforehand by Kensington Palace; instead, it leaked out on Twitter, and the palace later called the visit "private and personal."
But now we have the photographic evidence of what he was up to. The Halo Trust said Harry visited the Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale, which saw heavy fighting during the southern African nation's 1975-2002 civil war.
The group said Harry, who is a captain in the British Army and an Apache helicopter pilot, toured minefields and met beneficiaries of the group's work. A palace statement said Harry, who also visited minefields with Halo in Mozambique in 2010, was pleased to see the progress Halo had made.
The BBC reported that Harry, like his mother, is bringing attention to the landmine effort but thinks some countries aren't doing enough.
"He is irritated about the countries that supplied these landmines are not actually putting in any funds to clear them 25 years later," Halo leader Guy Willoughby told the BBC. "He has got quite a bee in his bonnet about that, and that is good."
