President of Equatorial Guinea visits Angola

At the opening in Luanda on 16 February of official talks with a delegation headed by visiting President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, President José Eduardo dos Santos said priorities for cooperation between the two countries were areas ‘that can best contribute to strengthened stability and security in the region’.

A general agreement on friendship and cooperation was signed, together with agreements on defence, security and internal order, oil and air transport.

President Nguema later laid a wreath on the monument to Angola’s first President, Agostinho Neto, and addressed a special session of the National Assembly.

He also visited the diamond polishing plant, the Kituxi water treatment plant, the Zango residential complex and the Sonils oil terminal.

For the past four years Ana Maria Carreira had been Ambassador to India and Thailand, where she has been replaced by António da Costa Fernandes, the previous Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Forum on capital markets

Speaking at a capital markets forum held in Luanda in late February attended by bourse specialists from around the world, he said oil would continue its upward trend, attaining 37.2 percent growth.

The Minister stressed that GDP had grown substantially over the past three years, rising from 3.4 percent in 2003 to 11.7 percent in 2004 and 15.5 percent in 2005.

Meanwhile, he continued, progress made in macroeconomic and public finance management had made it possible to increase the country’s foreign reserves. There were now sufficient foreign reserves to restore the solvability of the economy in economic and financial relations with the international community. In this new situation, he said, private business could develop in a climate of economic security, without risk of losses from inflation or a volatile exchange rate.

In the past, the Minister said, it was not possible to talk of savings, owing to the growing propensity for speculation, which was why the establishment of a real stock exchange was not viable. Now that a number of constraints had been overcome, the government strategy had led to increased domestic savings to enter the financial market, through banking institutions and the future stock exchange.

The forum was attended by about 200 people, including the chairmen of American commercial banks, international specialists in setting up stock exchanges, Euronext administrators, the director of the Johannesburg stock exchange, the former chairman of the São Paulo stock exchange in Brazil and representatives of Latin American professional certification institutes.

They discussed capital market supervision, financial intervention, taxation in free market societies, and securities and pension funds as investments.

The forum was called by Angola’s capital market commission, which is creating the technical and material conditions for opening Angola’s first stock and derivatives exchange, BVDA, most likely in the third quarter of this year.

‘We have received the government’s response to the main questions we had raised on the voter registration programme and a new version of the programme and timetable,’ he said.

The CNE estimated that between seven and eight million voters would have to be registered and thought that six months would be needed for this.

The government’s initial programme provided for only three months and the CNE warned that this would have to be revised, owing to delays in preparing for elections.

The new proposal was to be examined at a subsequent CNE meeting. Adão de Almeida said the government had also provided additional information requested by the CNE on technical aspects of voter registration, mine clearance and the registration brigades.

The CNE had already sworn in the provincial electoral commissions and municipal electoral offices.

According to a press release issued after the meeting, the conventions are to give institutional strength to preventing and fighting transnational organised crime, with the aim of ending existing links between corruption and other forms of crime that affect all economies and countries’.

Among others who laid wreaths were dozens of survivors of the heroic events of 4 February 1961.

They then visited an exhibition of photographs showing some of the most memorable events that ensued, including the tremendous welcome given at Luanda airport on 4 February 1975 to the then leader of the MPLA, Agostinho Neto, who was to become the first President of independent Angola nine months later.

There were stands displaying the work of Angolan artists, as well as books and records of national authors and musicians. The programme ended with musical and theatrical performances which attracted hundreds of the inhabitants of Cazenga, a working class neighbourhood that was known for its combative attitude to the fascist colonial regime.

The Prime Minister said that 4 February had enabled Angolans to achieve their first objective, national independence.

The example of those who had made that dream possible, he said, should give more strength and determination in the struggle for development, so that all Angolans might live better.

New investments in agriculture

EDAs, which come under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, were set up to work in rural areas to help peasants to improve cultivation methods and techniques and raise the living standards of rural families.

He spoke of the need for more talks to make people aware of the importance of protecting trees, which were the lungs of the city. Reforestation was necessary, he said, to maintain the balance of ecological and environmental systems in the region, which is the habitat of the giant sable antelope.

In Kunhinga, 30 km north of Kuito, capital of Bié Province, more than 10,000 trees are being planted by the agricultural development station, EDA. Adão Job, the local head of the EDA, said they were replacing trees destroyed during the war by charcoal burners and firewood users, in order to protect the area from natural calamities like ravines, wind storms and other destructive factors.

‘Highways will be repaired within three years’

He was speaking in Lubango, capital of Huíla Province, during the awarding of the contract for the repair of the Lubango-Matala road. The 42-km road is part of the major transversal corridor in the south of the country.

Joaquim Sebastião, director of the National Highway Institute, INEA, said that as a result of recent investments in the region, it was likely to be one of the main agricultural centres in the country.

‘Apart from the road being the main access route to the Matala hydroelectric dam, this marks the start of the road link between the provinces of Huíla, Benguela, Huambo and Kuando Kubango,’ he said.

The work to be done consists mainly of rehabilitating the surface, improving the signals and repairing the drainage system.

Ramos da Cruz, governor of Huíla Province, said the rehabilitation of the road, scheduled to take twelve months, would make it possible to take produce from the Matala canal to the city.

Private companies operating at the three terminals are to invest in the building of new wharfs and warehouses, among other modernisation projects; US$24 million is to be invested in the first year.

According to Silvio Vinhas, chairman of the board of directors of the port, owing to the stability of the market, there had been an unparalleled increase in the flow of goods through the port in recent years.

Last year, he said, the movement of goods had increased by 12 percent. Forecasts indicated for 2010 were 5.3 million tonnes of goods and 680,000 containerised tonnes, making Luanda one of the major ports in the region, comparable with Durban, Cape Town and Dakar.

It is not currently regarded as efficient by its international counterparts.

A strategic plan presented in Luanda on 14 February to companies operating in the port outlined the changes needed to meet the growing needs. The plan gives great emphasis to respect, openness and transparency, as well as to prime concern for customers, security, the community and the environment, and improving the quality and prices of port services.

Manuel Nazareth Neto, director of the project, said three private companies had already started work in the port last August, while the state was playing a monitoring and coordinating role.

Sonangol EP is the concessionaire in Block 32 and Total E&P Angola, a subsidiary of the Total group, the operator, with a 30 percent interest. The partners are Marathon Oil Company (30 percent), Sonangol EP (20 percent), Esso Exploration and Production Angola (15 percent) and Petrogal (5 percent).

Speaking to the press after a meeting with the port authorities the previous day, Zhuang Xiao Ping, head of the Chinese repair team, guaranteed that work would start as soon as the material they needed was unloaded and in place.

José Carlos Gomes, director general of Lobito port, said his company would work twenty-four hours a day to meet the CFB construction needs. He said the start of the rehabilitation of the line represented a ‘new dawn’ in the life of Angolans and would greatly benefit the economy of Angola and SADC countries.

Brigadier Fernando Andrade, assistant commander of the National Air Force, FANA, in central Angola, guaranteed full FANA support in providing security and emergency services for the Angolan and Chinese teams working on the railway.

Agreement on electricity signed with South Africa

The agreement is on the exchange of information on electric power policies, strategies, priorities and institutional and regulatory frameworks, the transfer of technology, research and development, the establishment of data bases and the marketing of technology.

Among other matters covered are issues related to power production and supply, personnel training, research, poverty reduction and sustainable development and the promotion and use of new and renewable energy sources.

In addition, Celestino Lupassa, said, they planned to rehabilitate a large number of wooden and metal bridges. ENE in Huambo has specialists in building and assembling concrete, metal and wooden bridges.

Japan to spend US$30 million on economic and social projects

The Japanese government has allocated US$30 million this year for economic and social projects in a number of Angolan provinces.

The money is to be spent on agriculture and mine clearance, according to a Japanese Embassy official.

Fertilisers and farm implements are to be provided for peasant families in Huíla Province, mine awareness programmes will be funded and mine victims will be treated at physical rehabilitation centres in Luanda, Lunda Sul and Huambo Provinces, the official said.

The two governments are also discussing the rehabilitation of the ports of Cabinda, Luanda, Lobito and Namibe, as well as projects in health and education.

Cholera outbreak in Luanda

Vita Vemba, Luanda director of health, said there had so far been 32 cases, all in the municipality of Ingombota, especially the Boavista neighbourhood. Increased cases of diarrhoea there had led Ministry of Health experts to investigate and cholera was confirmed.

The provincial government had created a unit to treat cases at the Boavista health centre and was distributing medicine and clean water, while a joint emergency commission had been set up by the Ministry and the provincial government. The provincial government also urged people to take preventive measures: washing their hands with soap and water before touching food and after going to the toilet and boiling or disinfecting water. It also advised against eating raw or badly cooked fish and shellfish, while vegetables and fruit should be washed before eating.

Deputy Minister of Health José Van-Dúnem considered that the poor housing conditions of the population in Boavista were conducive to the spread of the disease and that the whole population should be informed, so as to prevent it from spreading to other neighbourhoods.

A cholera treatment centre was established in the Sambizanga neighbourhood of Luanda following a meeting between José Van-Dúnem and representatives of national and international institutions involved in fighting the disease. Meanwhile, patients were still being treated at the overcrowded Boavista clinic.

Minister of Health Sebastião Veloso revealed on 27 February that there had been ten new cases in the past twenty-four hours. The number of cases since the start of the outbreak had risen from 92 to 102, and there had been ten deaths.

Measures to prevent avian flu

Fatoumata Diallo, the WHO representative in Angola, said the population had to be informed about the risks of the disease, since there was no treatment for it. The WHO, she said, could provide specialists, as it had in Nigeria.

National Radio of Angola reported on 10 February that the government had banned imports of birds, chickens and fertilised eggs from Nigeria. Filipe Vissesse, director of the veterinary services of the Ministry of Agriculture, said the government had also stepped up controls at ports, airports and border posts. He said imports from other affected countries had also been banned.

He advised poultry breeders to remain calm and to contact the veterinary services immediately in the event of any abnormal symptoms in their birds, and to prevent any contact between farm and migratory birds.

The problem of avian flu, detected in ostriches in Zimbabwe in 2005, was discussed at a meeting of the SADC council of ministers in Gaborone, capital of Botswana, on 23 February. Minister of Finance Ana Dias Lourenço, who led the Angolan delegation to the meeting, said the council of ministers had already instructed its secretariat to draw up an emergency plan, in conjunction with the FAO and the ministers of agriculture of the region, with clearly identified measures to stop the spread of the disease to other countries.

She said a workshop would be held in Johannesburg in March, attended by ministers of health and agriculture of member states, with a view to the adoption of appropriate measures.

DFID donates US$6 million to fight Aids

DFID is also working with European Union development partners on two similar HIV/Aids projects. The Irish NGO GOAL received US$852,016 from DFID to establish and run advice and testing centres in Moxico and Lunda Sul provinces and Médecins Sans Frontières Holland was given US$966,000 for its anti-retrovirals programme in Malanje Province. DFID also donated US$956,074 to Unicef for its work with orphaned and vulnerable children affected by HIV/Aids.

Technical assistance is provided by DFID to Angola’s national HIV/Aids secretariat through two senior specialists recruited through UNAIDS at a further cost of US$1 million.

The fight against HIV/Aids

Speaking at a meeting on Aids organised by the Association of Economic Journalists in late February, Alberto Stella, the UNAIDS representative in Angola, recommended relations based on monogamy, in order to ensure that the country maintained its rate of 5 percent cases of HIV/Aids, one of the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. He also stressed the need for regular medical consultations. The absence of a social model centred on monogamy and the failure to ensure adequate and regular treatment to identify the disease, he said, were the main reasons why Africa had one of the worst contagion rates.

In Angola the highest rates were in the provinces of Cunene and Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul, as a result of continual contact with people in neighbouring countries, mainly through trade, he said.

The 2006 programme to fight HIV/Aids in the Angolan Armed Forces, FAA, involves far more military units than last year. This was stated on 12 February in the commune of Oimole, in the southern province of Cunene, by Major General Agostinho Nelumba ‘Sanjar’, chief of general staff of FAA. Action to be taken included education and information programmes in military schools and training centres and the compulsory use of this material in combat training and radio and television programmes for the armed forces.

Major General Sanjar said HIV/Aids diagnosis and treatment and psychological and social support would be decentralised to the military regions in 2006, ‘giving priority to border areas where there is greater risk of contagion, which is why there is an urgent need to make medicines more accessible for the troops’.

He went on to say that personnel had to be trained to extend this work and be able to give moral support to patients and their families, in order to eliminate discrimination and the exclusion of those affected.

An international meeting on clinical tests of new medicines and diagnostic methods for sleeping sickness was held in Luanda in mid-February, bringing together health specialists from Angola, DR Congo, Congo, Uganda and Sudan.

Dr Fatoumata Diallo, representative of the World Health Organisation in Angola, said there were an estimated 60 million people exposed to the disease in Africa and that dozens of villages in Angola had been depopulated because of the large number of victims.

She said that since the last meeting held in Kinshasa in 2005 the WHO hoped the Luanda meeting would show progress in strengthening capacity for clinical tests. ‘I hope for strengthened national capacity, the training of mobile teams for actively seeking out cases, improved treatment and care of patients, fighting the vector and the development of social mobilisation activities,’ she said.

She went on to say that the success achieved in Angola in the campaign against polio, in eliminating leprosy and in fighting transmissible diseases like the Marburg haemorrhagic fever should serve as a stimulus for combating sleeping sickness.

Speaking at the opening of the meeting, Sebastião Teta, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, said that unless new ways of treating sleeping sickness were identified it would continue to cause sorrow and suffering in families.

‘It is gratifying for our governments,’ he said, ‘to see that the prime role of science and technology in development is starting to be recognised, especially for achieving the goals of economic and social wellbeing.’ He added that big problems faced by their countries were access to knowledge and technology, the lack of research facilities and the brain drain.

The 100-bed hospital has a large number of departments, including ear, nose and throat, dermatology, paediatrics, neurology, ophthalmology and physiotherapy, as well as a mother-and-child care centre, a maternity section, three operating theatres, an X-ray department, a canteen, a laundry and an outpatient clinic. It was built in 15 months, at a cost of US$8 million, by the China Overseas Engineering Company, using a 90 percent Angolan workforce.

The President re-opened the Josina Machel hospital in Luanda that same day. It was restored at a cost of US$42 million by the Japanese Nishimatsu Construction Company, assisted by the Japanese consultants Nihon Sekkei, also with a 90 percent Angolan workforce.

The hospital has 700 beds, an emergency ward, operating theatres with the most up-to-date equipment, a laboratory and other departments. Treatment in the emergency ward is free of charge.

Built in 1883, it used to be called the Maria Pia hospital.

Speaking in Negage, Uíje Province, in mid-February, Domingas Alfredo, in charge of the social department of the provincial government, said US$23 million would be spent this year on the rehabilitation of four health posts in Negage. Each, she said, would have two eight-bed wards, a pharmacy, a waiting room and other facilities.

It said that World Bank experts and Angolan officials had met in Luanda for three days to negotiate the details of the donation, the second of its kind. Like the first one, it is to improve the basic social conditions of low income people.

The priorities include the rehabilitation of facilities destroyed in the war, particularly the road and bridge between Lucala (Malanje) and Negage (Uíje), and the electric power supply system in the provinces of Kwanza Norte, Uíje, Malanje, Moxico, Bié and Luanda.

Carlos Alberto, Deputy Minister of Planning, who headed the Angolan delegation, said two new aspects were that ‘this is the first project financed by the World Bank that has passed the barrier of US$100 million and it is also the first time that such negotiations are held in Angola’. He added that the action set out in the project showed the Angolan government’s determination to lift the country out of extreme poverty.

The partnership between the government and the World Bank has existed for more than two decades. The first phase of the PMER absorbed US$51 million granted by the International Development Association, US$25 million of which was a donation and the rest a loan.

Assistance to drought victims

The goods, which included, among other things, maize meal, rice, beans, salt, cooking oil and blankets, were to offset shortages suffered by people in drought-affected areas.

Provincial governor Pedro Mutinde thanked Minars for the donation and said they were going to step up the food for work programme, encouraging communities to make water holes and build wells and schools for themselves.

Programme of assistance to young people at risk

A programme for assisting and reintegrating children and young people at risk was launched on 10 February in Lubango, capital of the southern province of Huíla, by the local office of the Ministry of Assistance and Social Reintegration, Minars.

The first phase of the programme is to cover 76,667 children and young people identified through a wide-ranging selection process carried out by Minars.

Victória Correia, the provincial Minars director, said the four-year programme would cost US$170,000 dollars a year. It included providing a monthly food hamper for children and their families, enrolling children in schools, giving them school materials, registering children and providing psychological and social rehabilitation for young drug addicts. She went on to say that a programme for young people would be launched in March to provide vocational training and promote self-employment. Those trained, she said, would be sent on to the training schools of the Ministry of Public Administration, Employment and Social Security, as others already had been.

‘We are in a period of transition from emergency to development,’ she said, ‘and we needed to define two groups at risk, vulnerable and handicapped children.’

More than 730,900 tonnes of assorted goods, including food and clothing, were already in the Minars stores in Huíla for the programme.

The roads and bridges are to be cleared by the British Halo Trust, the National Demining Institute and the Angolan army. According to CNIDAH, the Huambo programme requires US$300,000, to be spent on project planning, assistance to victims, recruitment and training of sappers and the acquisition of equipment.

Pedro Tandala Dambi, the CNIDAH liaison officer, said in Ndalatando that the Angolan Armed Forces, FAA, had deactivated 1,148 mines, most of them anti-personnel mines, in Kwanza Norte Province in 2005. FAA, he said, had identified 125 areas believed to be mined in nine of the ten municipalities in the province. Sixty-four of those areas had been cleared.

He lamented the fact that one person had died and another was seriously injured in mine accidents in the region in 2005.

It was meanwhile reported that 218 explosive devices had been removed by the National Demining Institute, INAD, in the municipality of Andulo, Bié Province, since November 2005. Coxe Sucama, the local INAD director, said they included anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, mortar shells, RPG-7 and AG 17 shells, assorted grenades, fuses and ammunition. The work, he said, was continuing in other areas of the province.

Mona Quimbundu is held to be one of the most heavily mined areas in Luanda Sul Province in northeast Angola. According to Armando Jorge Segunda, director of the provincial demining programme, there were 60 suspected minefields there. He said that 78 anti-personnel mines and one anti-tank mine had recently been removed in an estimated area of 400,000 square metres. This work had been done by INAD and two NGOs, AAR-Japan and the British Mines Advisory Group.

Armando Jorge Segunda went on to say that 91 mine victims had already benefited from a physical rehabilitation programmes and 76 of them were working after receiving micro-credits.

Improved food security

Gilberto Buta Lutucuta, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said in Rome in mid-February that, generally speaking, the food security situation in Angola had improved.

Addressing a meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, he added that there was nevertheless a 41 percent shortfall in what was needed to address areas of food insecurity that still existed in some regions, especially the central highlands. Angola, he said, needed 625,000 tonnes of grain to meet its food needs and there was an urgent need for integrated rural development programmes for vulnerable people in that region.

However, the Minister continued, the agricultural situation in the country was satisfactory. The results of the last agricultural year had been excellent, with a nine percent increase in areas sown to crops and the added advantage of good weather conditions. There had been a 26 percent increase in cassava, sweet potato and potato yields compared with the previous year.

Speaking of the difficulties of all kinds still affecting the African continent, he asked IFAD to play a more active role in raising funds, in order to increase the number of projects that could help to reduce hunger and poverty and create jobs and income.

Angola and Brazil sign agreement on food security partnership

Brazilian staff from universities in Brazil and Canada and Agostinho Neto University signed an agreement in Luanda on a partnership to train Angolan personnel in the area of food security.

Cecilia Rocha, director of the Ryerson University Centre for Studies in Food Security in Toronto, said it would make it possible to train Angolans to carry out effective strategies against food insecurity. She said a food security programme, an initiative of the Canadian International Development Agency, would be implemented through the agricultural science faculty in Huambo. Courses would also be given in the faculty by Brazilian and Canadian lecturers by internet.

The programme also included setting up food security councils, training government and NGO officials in public food and nutrition policies and training community workers to work as intermediaries between the government, NGOs and communities. It will be carried out in Huambo Province, with the support of the Angolan NGO Action for Rural Development and the Environment, Adra, which will be one of the partners, and is expected to end in 2010.

The partnership was established during a meeting between Armando Valente, dean of the agricultural science faculty, and Brazilian lecturers Renato Maluf from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Lucienne Burland from the Fluminense Federal University.

Sign language dictionary launched

The first Angolan digital sign language dictionary, containing 500 words, was launched on 7 February.

This first volume, an initiative of the Ministry of Education, was produced by the National Institute for Special Education in partnership with Unesco.

A Ministry of Education statement said that standardising sign language in Angola was essential to ensuring proper education for members of the deaf community and ensuring their full integration in school life and society.

Work is still in progress on the second volume, for which 350 words have so far been identified.

An agreement between Agostinho Neto University and BP Angola was signed in Luanda on 8 February aimed at increasing the abilities and success rates of students studying engineering and geosciences. The average number of students who pass in these subjects is 50, which is about 25 percent of the first year student intake. About 50 percent fail in the first two years.

According to a joint study made by the university and BP, Angola will need more than 8,000 engineers and geoscientists in the next six years. BP plans to recruit 350 of them.

Under the agreement, courses are to be improved by the purchase of books in Portuguese, the granting of annual scholarships, financial support for improving education programmes and assistance in revising curricula and acquiring equipment and other resources.

The agreement will also permit the Angolanisation of the oil industry, since there will be more qualified Angolans to meet the needs of the industry and the country’s reconstruction and development. At the same time, expenditure on foreign manpower will be reduced.

Carnival

There was carnival in the streets of Luanda and other cities of Angola over the last weekend in February.

In Luanda the three-day carnival on the coastal avenue known as the Marginal started with a parade of children’s groups and ended with thirteen adult groups. All were competing, with their music, dance and bright costumes, to win the acclaim of the judges and the thousands of spectators.

A long-standing tradition, carnival was reintroduced in 1978 after independence.

Cultural research commission set up

A meeting of the scientific council of the Ministry of Culture in early February set up a commission to study the broad lines of scientific research in the area of culture.

The five-member commission was to present a report within 30 days on the research priorities in respect of national languages, history, ethnology, ethno-musicology, ethno-science, the study of names, cultural heritage and art forms.