Tag: angola

Higher Education in Angola is not in Safe Hands

Since Angola’s civil war ended in 2002, the overall number of students in higher education has risen more than tenfold to over 140,000 but have educational standards kept pace? Some suggest they have not; that quantity should not be confused with quality. No less a figure than General João Lourenço, the MPLA Vice-President and Defence Minister, said in a speech to the academic community this month that institutions of higher education should not exist just to train the masses. He referred openly to the need for higher quality in Angola’s institutions of higher education and added that merit should be rewarded. It is remarkable that João Lourenço chose to highlight the concept of merit when this has not been high on the list of attributes required for appointments under José Eduardo dos Santos’s regime. Up to now nepotism, affinity and servile obedience have been more likely to secure an academic […]

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Angola’s Rampant Extra-Judicial Killings

More witnesses have come forward to corroborate reports of a wave of extra-judicial killings by elements of the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) working with the National Police in the suburbs of the Angolan capital, Luanda. Testimony and evidence from multiple sources points to an astonishing level of violence at the hands of either police or SIC agents, including more than 100 extra-judicial shootings in the past five months. Highly-placed sources in the Angolan government suggest that this is the direct result of pressure from the Interior minister for the SIC to crack down on crime in the Viana suburb. Criminal investigators Recently Maka Angola reported the killing of José Loureiro Padrão, known as ‘Zeca’, a 40-year-old motorcycle mechanic who was beaten to death while in SIC custody. A witness to that killing has now come forward to corroborate the family’s complaint and to give further details. “Zeca was wrapped in […]

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Abuse of Power in Angola (Part I): How the MPLA Elite Clears Land for Their Own Use

Earlier this month graphic pictures emerged from Angola of the killing of 14-year-old Rufino António, shot in the head at close range by a soldier enforcing demolitions in the poor neighbourhood of Walale, south of the capital, Luanda. This is not an isolated incident. The Angolan authorities have commonly resorted to sudden mass demolitions of entire neighbourhoods to clear the land for redevelopment, with little or no regard for residents’ legal rights, or even their lives. Sometimes there are legal grounds for these actions, such as slum clearance within the ambit of the Luanda Development Plan – a scheme praised by international urban planners unfamiliar with the reality of how it is being executed. All too often, however, the mass demolitions are ordered by unscrupulous and greedy members of the ruling elite who see the chance to grab choice portions of land for their own ends. Bound by blood to […]

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China Chokes Angola Credit

Is China beginning to lose patience with the Angolan regime? Maka Angola has learned that the China Development Bank (CDB) has declined to make any further funds available to the Angolan state oil company Sonangol, under a US $15 billion line of credit granted in December 2015, citing Angola’s “lack of contractual compliance” and attempts to “use the money for indeterminate ends”. Sources at the Angolan Finance Ministry have revealed that US $5 billion of December’s loan was intended to cover oil production costs, leaving US $5 billion for debt refinancing. In exchange Angola would increase its cargoes of crude to China. The other US $ 5 billion are for the Finance Ministry’s use. Until recently over half of the 50-60 oil shipments out of Angola each month went to the Western oil majors who operate the oil fields and platforms that allow Angola to export 1.8 million barrels per […]

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Meddling With Angola’s Electoral Register is Unconstitutional

Why does Angola need a new Electoral Registration Law?   Particularly one which would transfer control of the electoral register from the independent National Electoral Commission to the Ministry of Territorial Administration under the tutelage of Bornito de Sousa, one of the President’s staunch supporters in the ruling MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola)? It’s a contentious move both in political and legal terms. Politically, it attributes to the party in power, the government of the day, the power to determine who can, and who can’t, vote. Legally, it violates the Angolan Constitution which explicitly attributes oversight of the electoral process to an independent body.  Article 107, Clause 1 of the Angolan Constitution states: “The electoral processes are organized by independent electoral administrative bodies whose structure, function, composition and competence are defined by law”. It is an internationally-accepted principle that the “electoral process” includes the compilation and upkeep of […]

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Sonangol’s Billion Dollar Headache

The task facing Angola’s state oil company, Sonangol, as it adjusts to lower revenues during the slump in oil prices, is complicated by a stratospheric debt burden which gives little room for manoeuvre.  And yet the new administration is unexpectedly making repayment of one private debt a top priority. In spite of multiple pressing issues (including the root-and-branch restructuring of Sonangol) repayment of this particular debt has been fast-tracked by Sonangol’s new CEO, the President’s daughter Isabel dos Santos.   A source close to the Sonangol board has told Maka Angola it’s the reason why Sonangol has been seeking a loan of US $800 million from a bank based in Egypt, offering as surety its shares in the Millenium BCP division of Portugal’s largest private bank, the Commercial Bank of Portugal (BCP). The urgent repayment?  A one billion US dollar debt owed to Trafigura. This is the joint venture between the […]

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40 Years On… The Boys are Back

Shrugging off the legal challenges to her appointment as President of the Board of Director of Sonangol, the President’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos, has lost no time in showing how she means to restructure the state oil company.  Her first task has been to recruit 120 Portuguese staff to senior positions. The new recruits will join a further 50 consultants – also mostly Portuguese nationals – currently working as consultants and advisers to Isabel on behalf of the Boston Consulting Group and the Portuguese law firm Vieira de Almeida, who in effect are jointly running the Angolan state firm at this point. The arrival of the Portuguese contingent to take over at the Angolan state oil company raises some interesting points:  firstly, the total absence of any national or international recruitment campaign and the lack of any attempt at dialogue between the managers and workers at Sonangol points to the same lack […]

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Rescuing the Angolan Economy

President José Eduardo dos Santos admits Angola is running out of money but he has yet to outline any sort of rescue plan.  Is Angola teetering on the precipice of economic disaster?  Or is it already in the abyss? In spite of international entreaties to diversify the economy and reduce its dependence on imports, the MPLA government has so far failed to make meaningful changes to ensure self-sufficiency.   So if the national bank has run out of money to pay for imported goods, what is the alternative? How can the government guarantee a continued supply of food to the Angolan people?  Are they to starve? Can the President tell us where he expects to find the resources to avert calamity? With Angola already having to service billion dollar loans, the President may have run out of collateral. Clearly his generation of governing officials won’t have to bear the burden of […]

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Chevron’s Misplaced Endorsement of Nepotism in Angola

What must Chevron’s CEO John Watson be thinking as he sits in his office in San Ramon, California and ponders the future of his Angolan subsidiary, the Cabinda Gulf Oil Company Ltd (Cabgoc)? How much longer does he estimate that he needs to keep on the good side of José Eduardo dos Santos’s corrupt and kleptocratic MPLA government to ensure Cabgoc can continue to operate?  Is he hedging his bets?  Or is he staking Chevron’s African corporate future on the faint chance that the Dos Santos family and their acolytes will not be brought to justice for their crimes? While oil industry analysts around the globe were divided about the merit of the President’s nepotistic appointment of his daughter Isabel to head the restructured Angolan state oil company, Sonangol,  Watson’s man in Angola, the Cabgoc director John Baltz, was telling a US-Angola Chamber of Commerce conference that he was “optimistic” […]

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Angola Travel Warning

Foreign nationals in the Angolan capital, Luanda, are being advised to take extra precautions after a recent spate of kidnappings.  The crime wave has prompted the United States to issue a security warning, highlighting what its Embassy in Luanda calls “developing crime trends”. In the past two months alone, Chinese, French, and Belgian nationals have been kidnapped by gunmen who demanded a ransom.  The victims were released unharmed within a few days once the ransom was paid.  The Angolan authorities suspect these crimes were all carried out by the same group and they have speculated that the recent murders of two Portuguese citizens may be linked to the kidnappings. According to the US Embassy in Luanda, the incidents revealed so far include the March 30 interception of a Lebanese-Belgian citizen driving near his home in the city centre, forcibly abducted by armed men but later released on payment of an […]

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