Category: Articles

Angola’s Hidden Succession Crisis

The election that may decide Angola’s future is not the general election scheduled for 2027. It may be the internal election of the ruling MPLA, at the party congress in December 2026. In Angola, the head of the national list of the party that wins the general election becomes president. The MPLA has governed since independence; its internal choices often become state decisions. Yet President João Lourenço is constitutionally barred from seeking a third presidential term in 2027. A serious ruling party would already be debating its next candidate, program, team and transition. Instead, Angola is being asked to stare into a fog. Lourenço wants to remain MPLA president. What he has not done is name a successor, organize a credible transition or open a real contest over the future of the party and the country. The silence is the message. It keeps the party dependent on his timetable, his […]

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Tax Bill Risks Turning Every Citizen into a Suspect

Reading some of Angola’s recent legislation can leave one wondering whether the problem lies with the reader, the drafter or a lawmaker legislating for a country that exists only on paper. Article 45(2) of the proposed Personal Income Tax Code, known by its Portuguese acronym IRPS, states: “Financial institutions must also submit to the Tax Administration, by January 31 and through the electronic transmission of data, information concerning receipts credited to clients during the previous financial year.” The language may sound merely bureaucratic. Its implications are anything but. The provision would require banks to report every amount received on behalf of every client during the previous year. In effect, every sum entering a depositor’s account would be transmitted to the tax authorities — even a small gift from a grandmother to pay for biscuits. This is a striking example of how lawmakers, whether under pressure from international institutions or driven […]

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Angola’s Garbage Tax, Imported Folly

A Disguised Tax There is also an institutional dimension that makes the measure still more problematic. Angola’s Constitution provides for local authorities as territorial bodies organised at municipal level and endowed with representative organs of their own. The municipal assembly is to be elected by universal, free, direct, secret and periodic suffrage, while the head of the most-voted list becomes the president of the local executive.   Yet Angola still has no functioning elected local authorities and has never held municipal elections. The result is a clear democratic distortion: a levy is being raised for municipal purposes, but municipalities remain run by structures dependent on the central executive rather than by locally elected bodies accountable to residents. Instead of strengthening the local autonomy envisaged by the Constitution, the garbage levy would feed municipal administrations that do not derive their authority from the direct will of the citizens being asked to […]

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Words That Imprison: Caholo and the Crime of Public Incitement

Activist Osvaldo Caholo, detained for nearly ten months since his arrest on 19 July 2025, was sentenced on 27 April 2026 to two years and six months in prison for the crime of public incitement to commit an offence. Initially, the Public Prosecutor’s Office had also charged him with rebellion and public glorification of crime. Maka Angola examines the judgment. Freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, protected under Angola’s Constitution, are essential pillars of any democratic order. They cannot be treated as mere rhetorical ornaments to be activated or suspended by the State according to the political convenience of the moment. The conviction of Osvaldo Caholo, handed down on 27 April by the judges of the 5th Section of the Ordinary Criminal Chamber of the Luanda District Court, sentencing him to an unsuspended prison term of two years and six months for public incitement to commit an offence, falls […]

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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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Angola Needs a New Constitution — Now

Angola’s constitutional order is not merely dysfunctional but economically distortionary. Since taking office in 2017, President João Lourenço has authorized an estimated $61.5 billion in public spending by presidential decree, without open tender or transparent contracting, frequently benefiting private interests linked to his inner circle. This is not an aberration. It is the predictable outcome of a constitutional design that concentrates executive power while neutralizing oversight. In Angola, the presidency is not anchored in a direct popular mandate but in party hierarchy, and its authority operates with incipient institutional restraint. The result is a system where political power and economic allocation are tightly fused. It undermines market confidence, distorts competition, and erodes the legal certainty on which long-term investment depends. If Portugal adopted Angola’s presidential model, the current president would not be António José Seguro. It would be Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, the top candidate of the most voted party in […]

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Between Succession and Collapse: Angola at the End of Lourenço’s Rule

Before asking who will succeed João Lourenço, a more uncomfortable question looms: what kind of country will he leave behind at the end of his final term? The issue is not merely one of political succession, but of structural inheritance. Over a decade in power, what has taken shape is not a reformist project, but the deepening of a system built on revanchism, state capture, and misgovernance. As Angola approaches a decade under João Lourenço, it has not emerged as a stronger or more just state—it has grown more centralized, more opaque, and more exposed to the whims of unchecked presidential power. The case of General Higino Carneiro illustrates the pattern. Cleared by the Supreme Court of corruption charges, he re-emerged in the political arena—only to face new accusations as he positioned himself as a contender for the leadership of the MPLA. This sequence suggests not a consistent system of […]

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Angola: An Election That Doesn’t Decide

In Angola, where corruption and the capture of state institutions by political and economic elites remain persistent concerns, the independence of the justice system is a matter of national importance. The country is now about to hold an election for one of the most powerful positions in that system. Yet the vote will not determine who actually wins. On March 16, members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office will elect candidates for the position of Attorney General. But under Angola’s legal framework, the outcome of that election does not decide the appointment. Instead, the three most voted candidates will be submitted to President João Lourenço, who will select one of them to lead the country’s prosecutorial authority. In other words: prosecutors vote, but the president decides. The arrangement creates an institutional paradox — an election whose result does not determine the winner. In any electoral process, the principle is straightforward: the […]

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Constitutional Breach: Secretary of State Remains Director-General of IGCA

On 3 March 2026, four months after assuming office as Secretary of State, Conceição Cristóvão convened IGCA employees to a meeting scheduled for 6 March to discuss the institute’s internal functioning — signing the notice in his capacity as Director-General. Today, 6 March, he has presided over that meeting. Similarly, Adilson Freire, who serves as head of the IGCA Director’s Support Department, combines these duties with those of chief of staff to the Secretary of State for Urbanism and Housing. Symptomatically, Adilson Freire took office as chief of staff to the Secretary of State in a private ceremony, without this information being posted on the Ministry’s website. Since 30 October 2025, Conceição Luís Cristóvão has served as Secretary of State for Urbanism and Housing. Under the Angolan Constitution and the legal framework governing public administration, appointment to this office makes it incompatible for him to continue exercising the functions of Director-General […]

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How Angola’s Land Registry Undermines Property Rights

A technical opinion confirmed the ownership of a 9.86-hectare plot in Talatona, Luanda. Angola’s Cadastral Institute concealed that finding for eight months while communicating a different version to prosecutors. The case reveals how manipulation of land records is eroding property rights and driving a surge in land conflicts across Angola. A technical opinion confirmed the ownership of a 9.86-hectare plot of land in Talatona, Luanda. The leadership of Angola’s Geographical and Cadastral Institute (IGCA) withheld that information for eight months and communicated a different version to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The case of Maria Africano da Silva exposes the risk of institutional capture within Angola’s cadastral system — and the legal insecurity surrounding property rights. The request forms part of a criminal proceeding for land usurpation (case no. 33.859/25-LDA) involving a dispute between Maria Africano da Silva and Orlando Veloso, former president of Sonangol Imobiliária e Propriedades (SONIP), the real […]

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