Embassy of Angola UK - Press Office, Newsletter No. 103

President José Eduardo dos Santos was in Namibia on 20 March to attend the investiture of the new Head of State, Hifikepunye Pohamba, which coincided with the 15 th anniversary of Namibia’s independence.

Hifikepunye Pohamba, the candidate of the governing Swapo party, won the elections held in November last year and replaced Sam Nujoma, who had led the country since 1980.

The new President, in his speech, stressed the need to strengthen the integration of the countries of Southern Africa, stating that Namibia would continue its contribution to and work with SADC.

The Angolan government is continuing to make every effort to defend the most vulnerable population, giving priority to assistance to children, women and old people. This was stated on 17 March by Georges Chicoti, Deputy Minister of External Relations, in an address to the 61 st meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

He spoke of the campaigns for the free registration of children, which had made it possible to identify 4.5 million children, though there were still 3.9 million to be registered in areas to which access was difficult.

He also referred to the establishment of a national system for the defence of human rights, the setting up of provincial human rights committees and promoting human rights education in the police, the armed forces and for the general public.

The Deputy Minister expressed his indignation at a UN report on human rights in Angola published after a visit to the country by Hila Jilani, the secretary-general’s special representative. He said it did not reflect the true situation in the country; and he requested the Human Rights Commission to send a special rapporteur to Angola in September or October to verify the current situation.

Among the issues he highlighted were action taken to combat HIV/Aids, the first conference on sexually transmitted diseases attended by representatives of civil society, where it was decided to set up community centres in rural areas to increase awareness and counselling centres in municipalities. A hospital had been opened in 2004 for treating HIV/Aids, and anti-retrovirals were being distributed free of charge.

Georges Chicoti said the first national conference on protecting and assisting the aged had been held in November 2004. It had recommended important measures aimed at ensuring food security, social assistance, health, housing, transport, education, culture, work, justice and social security for old people, as part of the international strategy on ageing in the 21 st century,

Democracy was being consolidated, he said, with the strengthening of democratic institutions, increased independence of the judiciary and greater participation by civil society in social and political life.

Social justice and respect for human rights had also been promoted, he said, through the creation of mechanisms aimed at ensuring social tolerance, fraternity and solidarity. The 2005 budget reflected the policy of consolidating peace, national reconciliation and reintegration in society and production and social expenditure had been increased.

The Deputy Minister also spoke of the setting up of inter-ministerial commission for preparing the elections – a body which would not replace the electoral commission to be formed to coordinate the process. He appealed to the international community to help and participate in the preparatory work, which would impart greater credibility to the future elections.

Virgílio de Fontes Pereira, Minister of Territorial Administration, stated in Menongue, capital of Kuando Kubango Province, on 4 March that the government had already allocated US$170 million for the first phase of the electoral process in Angola.

The Minister, who is also coordinator of the inter-ministerial commission assessing the logistical requirements for the elections, said that US$20 million of this sum had been given to the Ministry of Justice for the national campaign for the free registration of adults.

He said it was not yet possible to estimate the definitive cost of the elections planned for 2006, because ‘from our visits to the interior of the country we are continuing to have a lot of surprises in respect of the difficulties and the complexity of the problems we still have to solve’.

He gave as an example the fact that ‘in 1992 we used forty helicopters, but in the next elections we will need double that number, owing to the bad state of communication lines’.

Among the priorities of the commission were the rehabilitation of facilities and roads, places to accommodate bodies supporting the elections, the repair of bridges, mine clearance and the resettlement and identification of people.

Some facilities could be repaired, but not all, and there were solutions involving renting buildings or, possibly, using ones normally used for other purposes, so as to give priority to the electoral process.

The Minister said there was a special plan for Kuando Kubango Province, owing to its size, the difficulty for government officials to travel in the interior because of mines, the bad state of roads and bridges and the large number of Angolan refugees who had returned from Zambia and Namibia.

With a land area of almost 200,000 square kilometres, aircraft would have to be used to help the government to overcome some of the problems, he said.

During the visit, the Minister and his delegation also went to Calai on the Namibian border, where they met members of the local administration, traditional and church officials and the Angolan consul in Rundu, a Namibian town where there are many Angolans.

The Minster said the logistical assessment being made throughout the country was because of the government’s concern that the whole population should be involved in the elections, even people in the most remote areas of Angola. No one should be left out, as had happened in 1992, when thousands of Angolans were unable to exercise their right to vote.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly unanimously agreed on 24 March that the state would finance the election campaigns of all registered political parties, including those without parliamentary seats. A group of 107 political groups not represented in the National Assembly had previously protested against the draft new Law on the Financing of Political Parties, which had withdrawn funding from parties not represented in the parliament.

The state currently allocates US$140,000 a year to all registered parties, which, according to many observers, explains the large number of parties in the country. There are more than 140 parties, the overwhelming majority of which have no known political activity.

A three-day meeting of business people from China and the countries with Portuguese as their official language ended in Luanda on 30 March. Held on the premises of the Luanda International Fair and organised by Angola’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, it was attended by 557 companies and individuals from Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, China, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Macau, Mozambique and Portugal.

Among the issues discussed were instruments of business cooperation, the market economy and globalisation, and the investment climate in tourism, logistics, fisheries, finance and construction over the next five years.

During the meeting, contacts were made and protocols signed on future partnerships.

The event followed a plan of action for economic and commercial cooperation and a protocol on cooperation between chambers of commerce signed at a forum on economic and commercial cooperation held in the special administrative region on Macau in October 2003.

Magnus Addico, secretary-general of the Maritime Organisation of West and Central Africa, Mowca, said in Luanda on 22 March that a regional maritime bank would be created this year.

He was speaking at a three-day meeting of Mowca held in Luanda to review coastal shipping and maritime safety.

The bank, to be based in Nigeria, will contribute significantly to the existing maritime fund, since the revenue that ship owners and companies deposit in foreign banks has not contributed to the development of shipping in the sub-region.

Cândido Silva, the Angolan chairman of the committee of experts at the meeting, said that ports in the sub-region handle more than 100 million tonnes of goods a year, creating enormous revenues which could be used by a regional bank for maritime development purposes.

He said that member states were paying special attention to the establishment of regional coast guards, a project for which South Korea was providing technical assistance, having helped to train personnel.

The Council of Ministers approved the 2004 report on budget and financial performance, in which it was estimated that GDP had grown by about 12.2 percent (at last year’s prices).

According to a press release issued after the meeting, it was also estimated that inflation was continuing to fall, international reserves had increased and the external public debt had fallen, mainly as a result of debt forgiveness.

It was noted that the 2004 economic year had taken place at a particularly favourable time, when the average price of Angolan crude oil was US$36.90 a barrel, producing gains for the country in terms of taxes and foreign exchange.

The press release said the government had recommended continued programmes to adjust fuel and water and electricity prices, as well as public transport fares, while maintaining subsidies on domestic water and electricity prices.

Other recommendations included evaluating the wages of public servants, so as to guarantee the maintenance of purchasing power, and the impact of public expenditure as a factor stimulating economic activity and improving public services for which the state is responsible.

The meeting also called for an evaluation of the total internal debt, and recommended that the public university introduce an advanced course of accountancy and auditing or set up higher institutes of accountancy and administration.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has allocated US$600,000 for preparing for the 2005-2006 agricultural year in Cabinda Province.

Provincial governor José Anibal Rocha announced this during a meeting with municipal and communal administrators and traditional chiefs. He went on to say that there were already ten tractors in Cabinda, which had been distributed to farmers. He also stressed the need to improve the coffee harvest, since the output in 2004 had indicated that production could be resumed.

Alcedo Lino dos Santos, provincial director of the Agricultural Development Institute, Ida, said conditions were ready to start a rural development extension programme in Bié later in March. He said the Ida had recently acquired four Pegasus trucks, 20 motorcycles and 31 bicycles, and would shortly be acquiring draught cattle, farm tools, agricultural inputs, fertilisers and other requirements.

He added that 106,000 families in Andulo, Nharea, Catabola and Camacupa had been selected and each would receive 75 kilos of rice, beans and wheat seeds, to be repaid after the harvest.

The aim, he said, was to ensure stocks and to create a seed bank in the province for future seasons.

Partners in the programme, he added, were the NGOs Care International, Africare and Concern, as well as Caritas and the Catholic church, which would help to distribute the goods and identify areas with fertile soil.

The Jornal de Angola reported on 12 March that railway equipment worth US$17 million would be supplied by India within the next two months for the rehabilitation of the Moçâmedes Railway in southern Angola. It comes with the framework of a US$40 million credit line opened last year for railway development.

The two governments have signed five agreements on the training of railway personnel, operations material, company management, the supply of equipment and the rehabilitation of workshops. The equipment includes 39 carriages, two restaurant cars, two luggage wagons and a railway first aid facility.

Minister of Transport André Luís Brandão said the agreements followed a visit to Angola by Indian technicians in 2004. He said the investment covered only equipment, the repair of workshops and personnel training, not the rehabilitation of the line.

‘We have been surviving with the equipment we had and a few engines bought shortly after independence,’ the Minster said, but now the line was going to be modernised.

The timetable for the implementation of the agreements was eighteen months, he said, and the rehabilitation of the line would be part of another programme.

‘As you know, we have had an emergency programme. We have completed the stretch between Namibe and Matala, and work is being completed between the Bêro River and Gerául. So this is work that is already in the final phase,’ he said. With regard to the rehabilitation of the Matala-Menongue line, he said that too would be modernised this year. The financial resources for starting work on that segment were already assured, he said.

The government is giving priority to the repair of the Lubango and Santa Clara roads and the line to Menongue, so as to make it easier to transport goods.

Endiama, the national diamond company, will double its current diamond production capacity of an estimated six million carats a year.

Sebastião Panzo, Endiama publicity director, said this would happen when Endiama Prospecting and Production started to function in the second half of this year. Operations by Endiama’s own company would mean for the first time autonomous mining without a partnership with any other company.

Endiama Prospecting and Production would develop a project in the Camanjanja area in Lunda Norte Province, which was expected to produce 7,000 carats a year. He added that six projects planned to start in June also included Muanza and Kacuilo.

Besides doubling Endiama’s production capacity, Sebastião Panzo continued, it meant that ever more areas previously occupied by illegal diamond miners were available. Saying the state lost millions of dollars as a result of illegal mining in various parts of the country, mainly by foreigners, he said these areas would now be occupied by companies licensed by Endiama.

This would also benefit the local people, making it possible to build more schools, hospitals, housing and other social and economic facilities essential to the country’s development.

Endiama’s major short-term plans, Sebastião Panzo stressed, apart from obtaining more revenue, were to build a big diamond cutting and polishing plant in the country, increase the training of its workers and improve the social conditions of communities in diamond mining areas.

The World Bank’s board of executive directors, meeting in Washington, approved the strategy for Angola over the next two years, an International Development Association grant of US$25.8 million and another of US$24.9 million for the implementation of the emergency multi-sector recovery programme.

The management of IDA funds for Angola is the responsibility of the government, through the Ministry of Planning, which is the direct partner of all UN agencies.

The credit is on standard IDA terms while the credit maturity period is forty years, with a ten-year period of grace.

The Angolan and Chinese governments have spent US$60 million since 2002 on the establishment of a fibre optic system to link telecommunications between the southern provinces of Huíla, Namibe and Cunene. Humberto Carvalho, director of Angola Telecom in the southern region, said the introduction of the technology would improve telecommunications.

Speaking during a visit to the project by Huíla provincial governor Francisco José Ramos da Cruz, he said it offered the consumer great advantages, making prices more accessible and facilitating online work by banks and companies.

The work, which is being done by a specialised Chinese company, Changbel, is scheduled to be completed by November. It will bring the digital telephone system to some municipalities for the first time.

The governor spoke highly of the rapid work, which was providing temporary employment for more than a thousand people. The three provinces, he said, would be well served by a new system that was more efficient and very cheap.

He and his delegation visited the new technical centres in the Nossa Senhora do Monte tourist centre, Santo António, the city of Lubango, Humpata and Chibia.

The Council of Ministers, meeting in Luanda on 4 March, passed a draft resolution on tax incentives for the second phase of a natural gas project in the Soyo area, Zaire Province. The project was started after the government banned the burning of gas produced by oil extraction, owing to the damage it caused to the environment.

Manuel Vicente, chairman of the board of directors of Sonangol, the national oil company, told the press that his company had been working with all the operators in the country on the issue of making better use of gas.

He said that the first phase of the project had been completed and the next phase needed substantial capital. Involving detailed engineering, it would cost about US$500 million, while the project as a whole would cost an estimated US$4 billion. ‘We needed to give our partners a little comfort in terms of tax and customs incentives,’ he said.

The project, Manuel Vicente said, would make it possible to make full use of the gas and would create about 2,000 jobs.

The first condensate production from the Sanha field, offshore from Malongo, Cabinda Province, was announced in Luanda on 1 March.

According to a ChevronTexaco press release, the production of liquefied petroleum gas, LPG, is scheduled to start early in the second quarter of 2005, when a 32,000 barrel per day LPG floating production, storage and off-loading vessel is fully operational.

Combined production from the Sanha project, which includes crude oil from the nearby Bomboco field, is expected to reach is average yearly peak of 100,000 barrels a day of oil, condensate (a light, valuable oil) and LPG. The plan is expected to significantly reduce the routine flaring of natural gas in Block 0.

The Sanha condensate complex serves as the hub for processing natural gas from the surrounding production facilities. Wells in the Sanha field, along with those from neighbouring fields, are now producing approximately 6,000 barrels of condensate per day in the Sanha complex. In addition, dry gas is being re-injected into the subsurface to help maintain reservoir pressure and for storage ahead of eventual delivery to the proposed liquefied natural gas facility.

The Block O partnership is formed by Sonangol, the national oil company, with 41 percent, Cabinda Gulf Oil Company, a subsidiary of ChevronTexaco, the operator (39.2 percent), Total Angola (10 percent) and Eni Angola Exploration (9.8 percent).

A joint press release issued by ChevronTexaco and Sonangol on 10 March announced that Sonangol, Cabinda Gulf Oil Company and their partners BP, ExxonMobil and Total in the Angola liquefied natural gas, LNG, project had signed agreements to establish the principles for gas supply, corporate structure and a legal and regulatory framework for the project.

It said the agreements were reached thanks to the strong collaboration between the Angolan government and the project partners.

Oil Minister Desidério da Costa was quoted as stating: ‘We strongly believe that the Angola LNG project will serve as a catalyst for Angola’s reconstruction and growth by facilitating increased production of the nation’s abundant oil and gas resources and by supplying natural gas for local industrial development.’

After tests for Ebola proved negative, José Van-Dúnem, Deputy Minister of Health, said at a press conference in Luanda on 22 March that an illness that had already caused 96 deaths in the northern province of Uíje, had been confirmed by the Center for Disease Control, CDC, of the University of Atlanta, USA, to be caused by the Marburg virus.

The haemorrhagic fever, he said, was transmitted through contact with infected people and through body fluids. The initial symptoms, he said, were severe headaches and muscular pains, high fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and nausea, in most cases followed within five or six days by bleeding from the mouth and other body orifices.

He went on to say that a technical team had been formed to help another one that was already in Uíje Province. There was also a technical team in Luanda, which was vulnerable because of the many people coming there from other parts of the country.

With the help of the Ministry of the Interior, he continued, conditions were being created to deal with dead bodies. They would go straight from the morgue to the cemetery, since relatives could have no contact with them or with people suffering from the disease.

José Van-Dúnem said that work had already started on establishing a laboratory for tests for rare diseases, which was expected to be completed by July. Qualified staff were being trained in Luanda. This would make it possible to make preliminary tests. In the case of Marburg, he said, these would have to be verified in specialised laboratories abroad. Owing to the danger of the virus, a high level of security was required. Such laboratories existed only in South Africa, Senegal and the USA.

A team of specialists from the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organisation and the Angolan Armed Forces went to Uíje to assess the situation and advise on measures to be taken.

Vita Vemba, Luanda provincial director of Health, subsequently reported that there were five cases of Marburg virus infection in Luanda, all people who had recently come from Uíje. Three of them, including an Italian nurse, had died and two were hospitalised. She later announced the establishment of a rapid alert system, giving telephone numbers on which to call epidemiologists who would ask for all relevant information.

Portugal sent various shipments of disposable medical equipment, protective hospital clothing, disinfectants and other articles to Angola, and the Italian government donated US$30,000 for the purchase of protective clothing and disinfectants.

It was announced in Brussels that the European Union had allocated €500,000 for the epidemic.

Addressing ambassadors accredited to Angola on 30 March, Deputy Minister José Van-Dúnem spoke of the evolution of the disease. He said the Ministry of Health and its partners, especially the WHO, the CDC in Atlanta and Unicef, had been following the evolution of the outbreak of haemorrhagic fever in Uíje Province since October last year. Samples were sent to the CDC in November. It was thought it might be Ebola, owing to the proximity with DR Congo. The results were negative. Samples were also sent to the Institute of Virology in Johannesburg and the Institut Pasteur in Dakar, but these also proved negative.

Another twelve samples were sent to the CDC and nine of them tested positive for Marburg. The Ministry of Health had received confirmation on 21 March, he said.

A press statement issued by the Ministry of Health on 30 March said there had been 127 cases of the viral infection, resulting in 119 deaths.

The city of Malanje has had an uninterrupted clean water supply system since 22 March, after eighteen years without piped water as a result of the breakdown of its only water treatment plant. The local water authorities said they were installing stopcocks and metres in homes in the centre of the city to control water consumption, while there were public fountains in peripheral neighbourhoods.

Also on 22 March, World Water Day, José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, Minister of Energy and Water, re-inaugurated the Bom Jesus water treatment system in Bengo Province. Located in the commune of Bom Jesus, about 50 km from Luanda, it was rehabilitated in fifteen months at a cost of US$600,000 to the government. This included the repair of 18 km of pipes, owing to the obsolete condition of the network.

The Minister said in his address that one of the priorities of his Ministry was to guarantee water supplies for the population, so as to improve living conditions.

It was reported on 23 March that a mobile system of harnessing, filtering and disinfecting water was being established in Dondo, Kwanza Norte Province. Supplying water from the Kwanza River, it was designed to lessen the difficulties caused by the fact that the normal system had been rendered inoperative because of flooding.

Installed by the Angolan company Precisal, with a donation from Unicef, it will be used until the normal system is restored.

José Luis, head of the local water department, said this would still not resolve the difficulties. What was needed was a new 900,000 litre reservoir to replace the existing 300,000 litre one built in the 60s. The old system was built for about 5,000 inhabitants, whereas Dondo now had 52,000.

Meanwhile, the normal system had been 50 percent repaired and was already supplying water to some neighbourhoods.

The provincial humanitarian coordinating group, GOPH, revealed in a report on 15 March that more than 4,000 square kilometres of land in Moxico Province had been demined in 2004 by organisations working in the area.

It said that 156 km of road had been cleared, as well as other areas, and that 387 anti-personnel mines and 90 anti-tank mines had been defused, and 4,125 unexploded ordinance removed.

The work had involved NGOs from Norway and Denmark and the engineering company of the Angolan armed forces.

The report said that during the same period, 620 landmine victims had been assisted by the American Vietnam war veterans fund, through the distribution of 300 artificial limbs, 279 pairs of crutches and 27 wheelchairs, while another 201 people had been trained as carpenters and shoemakers.

Meanwhile, the British NGO Halo Trust recently defused explosive devices under a river bridge in Caimbambo, Benguela Province. José de Oliveira, the municipal demining coordinator, said they had destroyed two shells and a 60mm mortar on the road from Caimbambo to Cubal. This, he said, followed information on mines in the bush around Caimbambo provided by a Red Cross team involved in mine awareness work.

He appealed to local people to be more careful, especially in the rainy season when, because of flooding, many submerged explosive devices were deposited on river banks. He said the Halo Trust had destroyed a total of 30 explosive devices in Caimbambo this year, including anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, mortar shells and hand grenades.

Sérgio Camilo, coordinator of the Halo Trust in Mavinga, Kuando Kubango Province, told the press that 613 landmines of different types found on roads and in fields had been destroyed by the Halo Trust in 2004. Thanks to this work, he said, people were now able to walk in safety and improve their lives. Some displaced people who had chosen to live in Mavinga were now in the demined areas, he said, adding that the Halo Trust would give priority to the most frequented roads. In 2004, he said, there had been no mine accidents involving people, only cattle having been affected.

The Jornal de Angola reported on 27 March that the Halo Trust had demined 548,674 square metres in Bié Province in 2004.

António Gomes da Conceição, head of the inter-sector demining and humanitarian commission in Bié, said that during this period 235 anti-personnel mines and 290 anti-tank mines had been destroyed, as had 1,126 assorted explosive devices.

He went on to say that 17 mine committees had been set up, 150 community leaders had been trained in mine accident prevention measures and 229 teachers had been given information on mine danger education.

With regard to assistance, he continued, the Kuito orthopaedic centre had rehabilitated 483 people disabled by mines and produced 501 artificial limbs and 880 pairs of crutches.

His NGO, he said, had carried out field work during which it had identified more than 200 areas suspected to be mined. It had also held 666 meetings to make people aware of the danger of mines, attended by 215,903 people from the region.

NGOs also involved in the work, he said, were the Child Support Group, the Angolan Red Cross, Care International, Africair and others.

There are more than 4,000 victims of accidents caused by mines and other unexploded ordinance in Bié Province.

Meanwhile, a group of sappers from the National Demining Institute started work on 26 March to clear mines from the banks of the Gango River in Kalussinga, on the road from Andulo in Bié to Quibala in Kwanza Sul Province.

The Ministry of Health started a programme, ‘Municipal Child Health Days’, on 14 March About 5,000 activists sought to reach families in all the country’s 164 municipalities to ask them to take their children under five to the nearest health post, in order to be given vitamin A, treated against parasites and receive BCG, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, measles and yellow fever vaccinations, while parents were given information on child health and hygiene. Mothers were encouraged to breast feed babies for the first six months and to use mosquito nets treated with insecticide. The campaign also included the vaccination of about 350,000 women aged from 15 to 35 against tetanus.

Mario Ferrari, the Unicef representative in Angola, described the campaign as a ‘decisive step towards reducing infant mortality in this post-war period’, adding that ‘this shows that Angola, despite the enormous damage to the health system caused by the war, is demonstrating its will to overcome the difficulties’.

Child cards were given to parents during the campaign, so as to create a closer relationship between the community and local health services and make the use of the services a family routine.

The campaign, in which the WHO also participated, had financing from the governments of the USA, the UK, Canada and Sweden and the involvement of national and foreign NGOs.

There will also be separate vaccination campaigns during the first two years, this year against polio and next year against measles.

The Ministry of Assistance and Social Reintegration, Minars, sent 242 tonnes of assorted goods to flood victims in Dondo, Kwanza Norte Province. A convoy of vehicles left Luanda on 14 March for the municipality. A Minars press release said the vehicles were carrying rice, maize meal, cooking oil, salt, 6,000 blankets, 4,500 corrugated metal sheets and 50 large tents.

At the same time, Pedro Wallipi, director-general of the technical unit for the coordination of humanitarian aid, announced the departure from Luanda to Dondo of another convoy with about 150 tonnes of essential goods – rice, maize meal, beans, cooking oil, salt, soap, blankets, metal sheets and tents. The convoy was accompanied by members of the civil protection commission and coordinated by Eugénio Laborinho, national director of fire fighters. The commission includes representatives of the Ministries of Health, Public Works, Environment, Agriculture, Information and Minars.

Maria da Luz Magalhães, Deputy Minister in Minars, who also went with the convoy, said that apart from the 10,000 homeless people, about 300 homes had been destroyed, the water treatment plant was in danger of being destroyed and the water was up to two metres deep.

It was meanwhile reported in late March that 47,000 people had to leave their homes in Icolo e Bengo, Bengo Province, because of the flooding of the Kwanza River.

Pedro Teta, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, presented to information directors and specialists from SADC central banks the strategic plan on IT development drawn up by the government.

The plan was presented during the closing ceremony of an international forum of SADC countries on information and communications technology held in the port city of Lobito in mid-March.

Pedro Teta said the plan involved promoting courses in new information technology, training personnel in the country and abroad, increasing access to computers and the internet and improving existing facilities and equipping them with the most up-to-date technology.

He went on to say that the aim was to use the technology to reduce poverty and improve the living conditions of the people, combating illiteracy, developing human resources, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of public and private institutions and improving relations between the government and the public, among other things.

The Swedish Ambassador to Angola, Anders Hagelberg, donated a cheque for US$6 million, an ambulance and six generators, on 10 March, for the mother and child care programme in Luanda. Anders Hagelberg said at the ceremony that his country would continue to support programmes aimed at reducing mother and child mortality and improving childbirth care. He also presented two vans for obstetrical assistance and promised two trucks which he said were already in the country.

Sweden has built nine delivery rooms on the outskirts of Luanda to improve medical care for pregnant women in densely populated areas.

Francisca de Espirito Santo, deputy governor of Luanda, expressed thanks for the donation, which she said would help to reduce the shortage of facilities for pregnant women and post-natal care.

Also speaking at the ceremony, José Van-Dúnem, Deputy Minister of Health, said it would also make it easier to transfer more complicated cases from neighbourhood delivery rooms to big hospitals.

The Social Support Fund, Fas, is to spend US$600,000 this month on 16 social projects in Mbanza Congo, capital of Zaire Province. Speaking to the press on 4 March at the end of a four-day visit to Mbanza Congo, Victor Hugo Guilherme, executive director of the FAS, said US$200,000 of this sum had already been given to two companies selected to build two schools and two houses for teachers in the commune of Kalambata.

The projects also included two primary schools, two homes for teachers, a health post and housing for nurses in the commune of Nkienda, and a school, a medical centre and two houses in Luvo.

Manuel Esteves, director of the Fas in Namibe, said US$2.5 million was to be spent on 36 projects in the municipalities of Camucuio, Tômbua and Bibala and the provincial capital in the areas of education, water, sanitation and health.

He said that since its first phase in 2004, the Fas had already disbursed more than US$7.56 million, benefiting 191,463 people and creating 938 jobs.

He added that in 2003 it had carried out 31 projects worth US$1.14 million, including schools, medical posts, housing for teachers and nurses, markets and abattoirs in rural areas.

A new paediatric hospital is to be built in Namibe Province. It will have 300 beds and the most advanced technology and it is hoped that it will be completed this year. Dr Nelson José, director of the Namibe Paediatric Hospital, said the state of the existing paediatric centre was so poor that there was an urgent need to build a new one. The present one is so crowded that some patients have beds in corridors. As a result, some cases which could normally be treated locally have to be transferred to other hospitals in the country or abroad.

Difficulties might increase, because more cases of malaria, respiratory diseases, diarrhoea and other endemic conditions were expected during the current season of the year.

Ana Paula dos Santos opened a new HIV/Aids counselling and testing centre at the Esperança Hospital in Luanda on 2 March. The centre, which has a mobile counselling and testing vehicle, comprises a waiting room, single and group counselling rooms, a consultation room and a laboratory.

She said the work of the hospital had been positive, so that efforts were being made to establish similar ones in other provinces. Stressing that Angola was surrounded with countries with high HIV/Aids rates, she spoke of the need for care and for making both Angolans and foreigners aware of the dangers.

Ducelina Serrano, director of the Esperança Hospital, said the new centre would make it possible to attend to the many people who came asking for advice and tests.

‘During 2004,’ she said, ‘the Esperança Hospital attended to between 548 and 659 cases a month in clinic and between 36 and 49 were seen by psychologists.

She went on to say that 4,683 people had come to the hospital for counselling and testing between March 2004 and February this year. Of these, 1,375 had tested positive, 492 of them men and 883 women.

‘Even with the discovery of anti-retrovirals, making it possible to transform HIV/Aids infection into a chronic condition, the pandemic is continuing to spread, especially in Africa, which has 70 percent of the infected people in the world,’ she said.

Ducelina Serrano went on to say that the Angolan government, supported by civil society, NGOs and the international community, was engaged in action to control the spread of the disease in the country.

The Esperança Hospital, the only one specialising in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/Aids, was opened by President José Eduardo dos Santos on 2 March 2004.

New trees are to be planted this year in more wooded areas in the city of Huambo by the Forestry Development Institute (IDF) project. IDF director António Pimentel said this was part of a programme to protect natural ecosystems in the region, adding that about 70 of the 150 planned hectares had already been planted with different tree species. Efforts were also being made, he said, to prevent the indiscriminate felling of trees.

Within the framework of Africa Environment Day on 3 March, there was a tree-planting campaign in Cambiote, about 10 km from the centre of the city of Huambo.

Another 90,000 trees will have to be planted on the outskirts of the city to restore all the woods destroyed during the war.

Huambo provincial governor Paulo Kassoma issued a statement calling on the local population to protect the environment, so as to transform Huambo into the ‘ecological capital of Angola’.

Meanwhile, the IDF director in Huíla Province, Gonçalvo Diogo Bernardo, said that 13,400 tree saplings had been grown in the past two months in the forestry area of Humpata, and that the IDF planned to plant another 5,700 this month, as part of the reforestation programme.

The programme was proving effective, he continued, since in the past two months the IDF had planted more than 150,000 trees of different species in the fourteen municipalities of Huíla Province.

He added, however, that people were indiscriminately cutting plants for use as firewood and charcoal, especially in the areas where the IDF had been replanting.

A brigade of fourteen technicians had been formed to supervise areas where burning took place.

It was announced in Benguela Province that more than 600 trees would be planted this year in the municipality of Caimbambo, 116 km from the city of Benguela. He said this was part of the anti-desertification campaign started three years ago by the IDF.

The Caimbambo community services were assisting in the programme. Last year, he added, the armed forces had taken part in tree planting.

By Marga Holness

Interpetre/Translator

Embassy of Angola UK