Angola is among the world’s poorest countries but its oil and gas reserves, diamonds and other minerals could turn it into one of Africa’s richest nations

hile a fragile peace is gaining in strength in Angola and the economy shows signs of expanding, how will its war-shattered citizens put together their lives, and what will be their priorities?
In a nation where hundreds of thousands of people are malnourished and depend on airlifted supplies, self-sufficiency in food is the top priority. Angola ought to be capable of producing enough to feed its 12 million people, but more than a quarter of a century of civil conflict has left the country’s agriculture and infrastructure devastated.

Angola is among the world’s poorest countries, yet its oil and gas reserves – and its diamonds and other mineral resources – could turn it into one of the African continent’s richest nations if there were peace and stability.
At least one million people have been killed in the conflict that has gone on almost continuously since independence from Portugal in 1975. Last year, 388 were killed and more than 450 wounded, many of them children, by land mines alone. One estimate puts the number of mines around the country- side at 10 million.
UN secretary general Kofi Annan has said there are “encouraging signs” of movement towards peace in Angola.The Security Council has been discussing a report on Angola presented by the secretary general and a report by the UN sanctions monitoring committee.

In March, Angola’s MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) government announced a peace plan calling for the leader of the Unita rebel forces, Jonas Savimbi, to declare an unconditional ceasefire, hand in his weapons to the UN, stick to the 1994 Lusaka Protocol and participate in an election, tentatively scheduled for 2002.
Angola’s president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, says Unita’s activities have become increasingly isolated and it has lost its capability for major operations. “We have been making calls for peace, and we still think that the Lusaka peace accord is the sole valid tool to settle the military crisis in Angola,” he says.

Lourenco ‘We are making great economic efforts that should be recognised’

Foreign minister Joao de Miranda has written to the UN Security Council, urging it to tighten its eight-year-old sanctions against Unita. Mr de Miranda says the sanctions, which include a clampdown on smuggled diamonds used to pay for the rebels’ arms, have had “a positive impact, significantly reducing Unita’s war-making capacity”.
Paulo Teixeira Jorge, secretary of the MPLA’s political bureau for international relations, highlights the irony of the situation Angolans have found themselves in. “If Angola were a country without great resources, we would not have this war,” he says.
According to Angola’s finance minister Julio Bessa, the economy is expanding as inflation declines and the currency stabil-ises. “The decline of inflation and the stability of the national currency have contributed equally to the expansion of Angola’s financial market,” he says.

The government anticipates that gross domestic product (GDP) will grow from 3.3 per cent to 11 per cent next year. This is based on a 16 per cent increase in oil exports as new fields come onstream.
However, Angola has been struggling to achieve goals set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that would qualify the country for a loan package and technical help to get the economy back on track.

Economy expands as inflation falls and currency becomes stable

Inflation targets and other objectives, including increased privatisation of state companies and monitoring of oil sector operations, were not met by the IMF’s June deadline.
At the beginning of October, the government hiked retail petrol prices in a move towards the IMF goal of ending state subsidies – reducing the amount of subsidy paid to state petroleum company Sonangol from 48 per cent to 36 per cent. But the governor of Angola’s central bank, Aguinaldo Jaime said recently that the deadline needed to be extended into the first half of 2002 for the IMF targets to be met.

Meanwhile, the UN’s World Food Programme will invest $168 million in aid for the poorest Angolan citizens next year. Much of it will be for humanitarian assistance.
Despite Angola’s increasing oil revenues, the war has forced the government to spend vast sums on defence – 41 per cent of its budget in 1999 – to keep the country’s Unita rebels at bay.
In this year’s budget more than a fifth of resources have been directed to national reconstruction and social benefits. A top priority is the resettlement of some 500,000 displaced people, most of whom have been living in wretched conditions in camps.
The cultivation of staple crops has resumed in most regions, but the means to market and deliver surplus to the areas of greatest need do not exist.
This is a huge problem that anguishes Fernando Muteka, the minister for territorial administration. “We do not like to beg. It is the war that forces us to receive free food,” he says.

Presidential adviser Carlos Feijo says the fighting has held back agricultural development in many rural areas. The government is in control of most of the country, but while rebel activity persists “we must organise agricultural areas where war cannot reach, and protect others”, he says.
President dos Santos, one of Africa’s longest-serving heads of state, has announced that he is to stand down at the next election, which is scheduled to take place next year. After more than 20 years in the job, he says: “It is only natural that in our society and in our country there should be other people capable of discharging these duties. It is my desire to open this possibility and that is exactly what I have done.”

Jorge ‘If Angola were a country without resources we would not have this war’

Among the possible successors to the presidency is Joao Lourenco, the current secretary general of the MPLA, which has dominated Angolan politics since independence from Portugal in 1975.
He says his party is willing to enter into dialogue with Unita as long as it falls within the framework of the Lusaka Protocol, which requires Unita to disarm completely.
“Since 1998 when the last blue helmet (UN peacekeepers) departed from Angola we have been fighting alone against the enemy, without any support,” he says. “We are making great economic efforts that the international community should recognise.
“Thanks to these efforts, we now have some political stability in Angola, and that is important for the development of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region.”

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