Category: Articles

Angola’s 2027 Budget and the Comforting Illusion of Numbers

Angola’s proposed 2027 budget deserves one compliment before the questions begin. The Finance Ministry has made its documentation available online with commendable transparency and technical clarity. Readers can examine the government’s assumptions. Whether those assumptions describe the country they live in is another matter. The first difficulty concerns political power. Parliamentary approval will leave the president with considerable discretion to reshape the budget throughout the year. Under Articles 4 through 6 of the proposed law, he may move funds between budget lines, adjust allocations, supplement spending with additional revenue and replace projects making little progress with others he considers strategic. He may also borrow at home and abroad, issue public debt, renegotiate existing obligations and refinance them. Such extensive powers allow him to redefine spending priorities after legislators have approved them. The budget becomes a broad statement of intentions, subject to presidential revision. Parliamentary authorization offers less certainty than the […]

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Inside Lourenço’s Head (Part II)

Saviours of Convenience Higino Carneiro embodies another form of complicity: discovering the system’s failings only after being sidelined by it. For decades, he belonged to the MPLA elite and helped entrench a culture of obedience and intolerance of dissent. Now, excluded from the contest for the party presidency, he faces the same absence of pluralism that the system has always imposed on others. The machinery became intolerable to him only when it shut him out. The party cites irregularities in his candidacy, which the general disputes. That dispute does not erase his political responsibility. Losing access to power does not turn a former beneficiary into a liberator. Democracy does not spring from the resentment of a sidelined official. Citizens were already suffering when he moved comfortably through the corridors of power. What freedom is Higino Carneiro prepared to defend without office, without privileges and without any guarantee of a return? […]

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Inside Lourenço’s Head (Part I)

President João Lourenço has one head. Angola has more than 38 million. Yet a single head does the thinking, makes the decisions and disposes of everyone else’s resources. There is no indication that the presidential head is unusually large or endowed with supernatural intellectual powers. What is extraordinary is that so many institutions — the National Assembly, the defence and security forces, the judiciary, the ruling MPLA and the opposition UNITA — and so many citizens still behave as though the fate of an entire country rested on one man’s will. On the streets, in markets and in family conversations, Angolans accuse Lourenço of treating the country as private property, the treasury as a personal bank account and its natural resources as a family inheritance. Having vented their anger, they return to their routines, poorer and more burdened than before. The president decides. His small court benefits. In a familiar […]

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Open Letter to João Lourenço: Accountability for Silence

To His Excellency The President of the Republic of Angola João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço Your Excellency, A criminal investigation into deals worth more than 4.4 billion kwanzas at the General Tax Administration (AGT) has been left “forgotten” at the Attorney General’s Office (PGR). According to Maka Angola’s reporting, those named in the complaints continue to rise through the state hierarchy. You promoted José Vieira Nuno Leiria to secretary of state for tax affairs. Finance Minister Vera Daves de Sousa appointed Bráulio Assis as Leiria’s chief of staff. Faced with allegations, those in power respond by granting impunity. You bear direct political responsibility for these choices as head of the executive. What interests justify such confidence in people who owe the country so many explanations? These questions have a history. In April 2020, in the article “A Government without Institutional Coordination”, I argued for the appointment of competent officials, free of […]

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Cotton Candy at Angola’s Tax Authority (Part II)

“I set up the company to provide an outlet for the Portuguese companies’ products.” Carla Castelo Trindade’s explanation was blunt. The Portuguese lecturer had taught José Leiria, formerly chairman of Angola’s General Tax Administration, or AGT, and now secretary of state for tax affairs. Business between AGT and In Pressionante Kianda generated invoices for three cotton candy machines, of which the company’s Angolan manager says he received only one, and transfers of hundreds of thousands of euros to Portugal. Part I examined how Carla brought her husband’s businesses to AGT and prepared deals before Kianda was incorporated. This second instalment follows the invoices and the money. A ready market The children’s fair, Cidade dos Kandengues Tributários, had been included in AGT’s 2024 communications plan, put out to public tender in November 2023 for 1 billion kwanzas. In messages reviewed by Maka Angola, Carla boasted of helping draft and manipulate the […]

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Cotton Candy at Angola’s Tax Authority (Part I)

José Leiria chaired Angola’s General Tax Administration (AGT) until 8 September 2026, when he was appointed secretary of state for tax affairs. Finance Minister Vera Daves has since appointed Bráulio Assis, AGT’s former communications chief, to head Leiria’s office. Both men feature in Maka Angola’s investigations into the authority’s dealings with In Pressionante Kianda. Earlier reporting showed how the company helped shape the tender it went on to win. Messages attributed to Assis indicate that he advised the bidder while chairing its evaluation committee. Their advancement gives Angolans further reason to fear state capture, with officials whose conduct demands scrutiny gaining greater authority. In a country where millions of children go hungry and have no access to school, even a cloud of sugar can provide a way to extract public money. Cotton candy, made mostly of air and sugar, looks more substantial than it is. In AGT’s business dealings, that […]

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The Finance Minister and the Kianda Quagmire

Vera Daves de Sousa, Angola’s finance minister.

Angola’s finance minister, Vera Daves de Sousa, has chosen to put her political authority behind officials at the General Tax Administration (AGT) implicated in Maka Angola’s investigation into the Kianda companies. After José Leiria, the AGT’s former chairman, became Secretary of State for Tax Affairs on 8 September 2026, Daves appointed Bráulio Assis as his chief of staff. The team is moving up the state hierarchy. Questions about its business dealings remain unanswered. Assis chaired the evaluation committee for the tender that In Pressionante Kianda helped to prepare and went on to win. Messages obtained by Maka Angola show him guiding the bidder he was supposed to assess. By choosing him to head Leiria’s office, Daves has publicly expressed political confidence in both men and assumed responsibility for that choice. What ethical standards govern the finance minister’s appointments? The issue is not the presumption of innocence. It is the reward […]

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Carrinho and the Risks Angola’s Central Bank Must Confront

Carrinho has controlled Banco de Comércio e Indústria since December 2021. In August 2024, the competition authority cleared its takeover of Banco Keve, subject to central bank approval. It has also acquired 7.61 per cent of BFA through its subsidiary Congolian Financial. If consolidated, these interests could give the group influence over roughly 30 per cent of Angola’s banking market. This expansion comes as Angola faces heightened international scrutiny. The Financial Action Task Force placed it on its grey list in October 2024, citing strategic weaknesses in its defences against money laundering and terrorist financing. The European Union added Angola to its list of high-risk third countries in 2025, requiring European financial institutions to apply enhanced checks to relevant transactions. Such scrutiny exposes the gap between the government’s rhetoric and the credibility of its financial institutions. The Carrinho transaction brings two systemic risks into sharp focus. The first is the […]

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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. […]

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Angola’s Tax Authority Hires Money-Laundering Suspect to Investigate Tax Crime

Angola’s Tax Authority (AGT) has awarded Portuguese academic Carla Trindade two consultancy contracts worth a combined 551 million kwanzas to help investigate tax offences. Yet documents reviewed by Maka Angola point to irregularities in dealings between her husband’s company and the same authority. She and her husband are also named in a criminal complaint formally lodged with prosecutors alleging money laundering, tax evasion and other offences. Trindade teaches tax law, tax litigation and arbitration at the Portuguese Catholic University’s Lisbon School of Law, where she coordinates the postgraduate programme in tax litigation and a short course on crime and taxation. She also teaches economic and business law at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics, and taxation on the master’s programme in business law at the Catholic University of Angola. She is entitled to the presumption of innocence. The central question is why the AGT hired her to help investigate […]

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