Category: Economy

Unitel Cyberattack Exposes Angola’s Strategic Vulnerabilities

Angola’s largest telecommunications operator has entered a second day of severe disruption following a cyberattack that affected voice calls, mobile data and internet access across the country. With approximately 21 million customers, Unitel carries the most significant share of Angola’s personal, business and institutional communications. The network outage has left families unable to reach one another, disrupted internet-dependent businesses, hindered payments and commercial transactions, and affected ride-hailing services and numerous other daily activities. The losses have yet to be calculated, but the economic and social impact is already apparent. Every hour of disruption means interrupted business, lost customers, suspended transactions and employees unable to work normally. In a statement issued on July 28, Unitel said the attack had been detected at 2.20am. The company said its response and containment mechanisms had been activated immediately and that its technical and cybersecurity teams were working to mitigate the effects of the incident […]

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Angola: Unitel Sale in Legal Limbo

The public sale of shares in Unitel, Angola’s largest telecommunications company, and the operator’s admission to trading on the country’s stock exchange mark an important stage in a privatisation programme that has so far offered investors few marquee assets. Unitel is a rare exception. On that basis alone, the transaction deserves support. Yet the deal comes with a legal complication that should not be relegated to the small print. Half of Unitel was transferred to the state by presidential decree in 2022, and the former owners continue to challenge that decision in court. If they ultimately prevail, the consequences could extend beyond the state and raise questions about the title acquired by new private investors. Unitel’s prospectus says the offering is intended to make shares available to Angolan and foreign investors, with a separate allocation for employees under the country’s privatisation law. The offer covers 15 per cent of Unitel’s […]

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Isaac dos Anjos Is Undermining Angola’s Credibility

Angola’s minister of agriculture, Isaac dos Anjos, deserves a peculiar kind of congratulations. By speaking so bluntly, he has done the country a public service: he has stripped away the pretence and exposed the national self-sabotage in which parts of Angola’s ruling elite still indulge. The masks fall. The choice becomes clear. On one side stand those who want a modern, prosperous Angola with a free and credible economy. On the other stand those who prefer the familiar fog of an oligarchic, clientelist and closed development model, condemned to delay because it cannot survive transparency. Dos Anjos’s recent public rebuke of the African Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation was not a diplomatic slip. It was a worldview made audible: the belief that Angola belongs, by historical right, to those who took power in war and kept it in peace, and that any external rule limiting their room for […]

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Carrinho: The Sanctions Shadow Behind Angola’s Industrial Showcase

Angola’s most celebrated industrial project was financed in part by a trader later sanctioned by the European Union and the United Kingdom. There is no proof of wrongdoing by Carrinho — but the absence of transparency leaves troubling questions unanswered. After examining how public contracts and sovereign guarantees have concentrated economic power in Angola (see the first part of this dossier), this second investigation looks at the international ties of the Carrinho Group — including partnerships with entities linked to sanctions proceedings in Europe — and the due-diligence and transparency questions that follow. Carrinho’s business relationships with several international entities warrant heightened scrutiny, particularly given the lack of publicly available financial information and the complexity of the corporate structures involved. Confirmed links connect Carrinho to Manty AG, based in Switzerland and led by Maurice Taylor, and to Paramount Energy & Commodities, founded by Dutch trader Niels Troost. Manty AG appears […]

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When Economic Power Becomes Systemic Risk in Angola

Angola’s diversification strategy was designed to reduce dependence on oil and build a competitive, broad-based economy. Instead, a growing body of public records suggests that economic power is becoming increasingly concentrated around a small number of politically connected conglomerates. At the center of this transformation stands the Carrinho Group. Over the past four years, the group has expanded from agro-industry into food importation, military logistics and banking, underwritten by presidential decrees, sovereign guarantees and state-backed financing. The Strategic Food Reserve: Over Half a Billion Dollars Mobilized The Strategic Food Reserve (Reserva Estratégica Alimentar — REA) was launched in 2021 as a national price stabilization and food security mechanism. In its first operational year alone, the Angolan state invested more than $200 million in the program, according to official reporting by the state-owned Rádio Nacional de Angola. Between late 2021 and 2022, President João Lourenço authorized four additional supplementary credit lines […]

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No Money in 2026: Angola Enters a Dangerous Fiscal Year

Angola debates many topics, but often avoids the most fundamental: how the State will finance itself in the immediate future. A close reading of the 2026 General State Budget (OGE), and especially its financing operations, shows a structural and cyclical problem converging — the State is likely to run out of money in 2026. The Ministry of Finance’s Budget Justification Report confirms extreme dependence on both internal and external borrowing to balance the accounts. According to the official “Summary of Revenue by Source,” external financing is expected to account for 23.85% of total resources, and domestic financing for another 21.39%. Nearly 45% of the entire budget is not covered by taxes or fees, but relies on loans that may or may not materialize. Angola will effectively be borrowing continuously to stay afloat. Even more troubling is that part of this borrowing will fund current expenditures, not investment. In practice, the […]

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NO MAGIC – ANGOLA’S BANKING SYSTEM IS JUST SMOKE AND MIRRORS

What happened to the US $2 billion injection of funds from Angola’s central bank (BNA) in 2014 that was supposed to refinance the Banco Económico (BE) as it emerged from the ashes of the failed Banco Espírito Santos (BESA)? Surely José de Lima Massano must have some idea? He was Governor of the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA) then and is again now. Did he keep track of where the money went? Because the BE is failing again and he seems all too ready to throw good money after bad: ordering majority shareholder Sonangol to inject a further US $1.2 billion of public money into it. So who does this bailout benefit? Mr. Massano is the master magician tasked by President João Lourenço with restoring good governance to the Angolan banking system. Is he not up to the job? Or is he actively sabotaging it? According to Diamantino de Azevedo, […]

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Repairing Angola’s Central Bank

In the wake of recent revelations of mismanagement and corruption at the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA), its Governor, José de Lima Massano, took to the airwaves in an attempt to defend his reputation and that of the bank. It was all to no avail, because many high-ranking officials have taken to heart the new Angolan President’s strictures against corruption and are willing to blow the whistle, backing up their claims with documentary proof. It’s evidence that should prompt the Attorney-General’s office to open an investigation. Maka Angola has been given a copy of the contract signed in 2013 for the rehabilitation of the central bank’s historic main building, signed by Massano during his first stint at BNA governor. As with other projects (like the much-derided Currency Museum), he hired the Angolan subsidiary of the Portuguese construction firm Somague to do the work. Somague stands accused of routinely padding costs […]

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Angola’s Path to Justice: Prosecuting the Guilty and Recovering the Stolen Billions

The dramatic recent arrests of high-ranking figures linked to former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos has gripped the public. Yet little or nothing has been revealed about the struggle to recover the billions of dollars stolen from the public purse during Dos Santos’s corrupt regime. Extensive whistleblower reports published by Maka Angola have led to numerous investigations and prosecutions across the globe to bring to justice all those who illicitly enriched themselves during the Dos Santos years. But efforts to repatriate the missing billions have been complicated by the tortuous schemes devised by the principals to obscure the money trail. One such example: Back in 2009, an Angolan company named Portmill Investimentos e Telecomunicações S.A. allegedly committed fraud in its acquisition of a majority shareholding in the Banco de Espírito Santo Angola (BESA). BESA was the Angolan subisdiary of one of Portugal’s oldest private banks, the Banco de Espírito […]

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Sums Don’t Add up for Angolan Central Bank

Angola’s central bank, the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA) has failed to produce its accounts for the second year running, with the current BNA Governor, José de Lima Massano, forced to issue a written explanation to the Angolan President. In so doing, Massano has brought to light a convoluted financial arrangement, sanctioned by one of his predecessors, in which the BNA unlawfully acted as guarantor for a US $200 million foreign loan for a private bank, the Banco de Negócios Internacional (BNI). Angola’s Banking Laws authorize the BNA to intervene to help a private bank only as a lender of last resort to inject liquidity during a temporary crisis, and only on condition that the private bank has sufficient collateral in non-liquid assets. The BNI case did not meet the criteria on any count. It is further alleged that the loan was obtained under false pretences, and that the BNI […]

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