Unitel: Small Investors, Big Losses and the Risk of Capture
By September 24, Unitel shares were trading at 28,000 kwanzas on Angola’s stock exchange, down 30 per cent from the July offering price of 40,040 kwanzas. In less than two months, roughly 300 kwanzas had disappeared from the market value of every 1,000 invested. For a country seeking to persuade its citizens to become shareholders, this is a sobering introduction to the stock market. The 15 per cent stake sold for 300.3bn kwanzas now had a market value of 210bn kwanzas.
The consequences extend beyond portfolios. According to Valor Económico, some subscribers sold land and other property to buy shares. Others borrowed from banks, expecting quick returns to cover their repayments. Some are now struggling to service those debts. An unrealised investment loss can become a very real household emergency when creditors demand payment.
Vasco Januário, an executive director of Angola’s Capital Markets Commission, has emphasised investors’ inadequate financial literacy. He also maintains that information is being provided and prices are being formed as the market operates. The implication is comfortable for the authorities: investors misunderstood the risks, while the institutions overseeing the transaction did their jobs.
That explanation deserves scrutiny, starting with the authorities themselves.
Unitel is a dominant telecommunications operator whose history illustrates the scale of the asset at stake. Its revenues reached an estimated $2.6bn in 2014, according to a subsequent account by its then managing director, Miguel Geraldes. In 2012, it generated $2.04bn in gross operating revenue and $964.5mn in net profit, with almost nine million subscribers. Those profits benefited from a corporate income tax exemption. Historical earnings cannot establish today’s fair share price, but they underline the company’s economic importance.
By June 2026, Unitel reported more than 21.2mn subscribers. First-half operating revenues reached 274bn kwanzas, up 17 per cent, and net profit stood at 66.3bn kwanzas. These figures make it especially important to explain the relationship between the business’s performance and its falling share price.
A sharp decline does not, by itself, establish market manipulation. An ambitious offering price, limited liquidity or deteriorating expectations can all drive losses. Precisely because several explanations are possible, the regulator should investigate the transaction and subsequent trading, rather than treating financial education as a sufficient answer.
One question is whether anyone could be deliberately depressing the price to acquire a valuable business more cheaply. Angola’s record of transferring public assets into favoured private hands makes that a legitimate concern. It remains a hypothesis requiring evidence, including who is selling, who is buying and whether apparently separate parties are acting together.
The Infrasat privatisation offers a reason for vigilance. Maka Angola reported that the state had committed more than $134mn in investment and assets to the satellite communications business, which was subsequently sold without a public tender for about $350,000 to companies associated with the ruling MPLA. Historical public expenditure is not a market valuation. Nevertheless, the terms and beneficiaries of that transaction warrant scrutiny. Is Unitel vulnerable to another form of corporate capture?
Market safeguards also deserve examination. Major exchanges use trading pauses to contain disorderly price movements. In the United States, marketwide circuit breakers respond to declines of 7, 13 or 20 per cent in the S&P 500 within a trading day; separate price bands govern individual shares. These mechanisms do not guarantee prices or automatically prevent losses accumulated over several weeks. BODIVA should explain which protections apply, whether any thresholds were reached and how it monitored trading.
The listing’s timing raises a further concern. Unitel entered the market amid a severe disruption to its telecommunications services. Proceeding under such conditions required particular care over disclosure, access to information and investors’ ability to assess the company’s position. What did the authorities know about the disruption? What information reached investors, and when? On what basis did they conclude that trading should proceed?
These are questions of institutional responsibility. The state, the exchange and the regulator should account for their respective decisions. Investors considering legal action would need evidence of specific failures and a connection between those failures and their losses. A falling share price alone would not establish liability. Nor, however, should warnings about investment risk shield officials from examining whether preventable failures occurred.
Financial literacy matters. People should understand that shares can fall and that borrowing to speculate can end disastrously. Yet a credible market also requires competent supervision, timely disclosure and rules applied consistently. Citizens cannot be expected to supply through personal caution the safeguards that public institutions are paid to provide.
The authorities invited Angolans to trust this market. They now owe those investors an explanation grounded in evidence, including a serious examination of who might benefit from the collapse in value. Lecturing households about their mistakes while leaving institutional decisions unexamined is an evasion of responsibility. Who, then, has been playing with other people’s money?