Angola’s story is one all too common in resource-rich developing countries, where impressive growth figures fail to translate into meaningful improvements of an average person’s life. Instead, a prominent group of well-connected nouveau riche emerges and seizes the reigns of political and economic power in the country. That leaves the rest of the population outside of Braudel’s bell jar, an “invisible structure … that reserved capitalism for a very small sector of society.”
NYT reports that due to the recent oil windfall profits, Angola is seeing an unprecedented rush of grand infrastructure projects: building new roads and railroad tracks, renovating airports, etc. In contract, improvements in the general welfare leave much to be desired.
- Angola is gushing oil, pumping about 2 million barrels a day, more than any other African country except Nigeria. The International Monetary Fund projects a 24 percent economic growth this year — one of the fastest rates in the world. The government is taking in two and a half times as much money as it did three years ago.But Angolans, by many indications, remain as poor as ever. The poverty rate is a matter of debate: the government claims a 12 percent drop in the past five years; analysts for the Catholic University of Angola’s research center say two in three Angolans still live on $2 or less a day, the same percentage as in 2002. Still, no one disputes that most Angolans face appalling living conditions, sky-high infant mortality rates, dirty water, illiteracy and a host of other ills.
One reason for this is that the investments in physical infrastructure have not been matched by corresponding efforts to build political and economic institutions of democratic governance and inclusive free market. The fact that Angola has recently emerged from almost 30 years of near-continuous civil war following its 1975 independence from Portugal certainly doesn’t help. But even after the hostilities seized in 2002, not much progress has been accomplished. Freedom House gives Angola a score of 6 on Political Rights and 5 on Civil Liberties (on a 1-7 scale; 1 indicates the highest degree of freedom and 7 the lowest). Correspondingly, the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom ranks Angola 149 out of 157 evaluated countries.
Wide-spread corruption and cronyism are among the most glaring problems not addressed so far. According to a list of the wealthiest people in Angola, published in 2003 by the Angolese Samanario newspaper, twelve of the top 20 were government officials and five were former government officials. Many of them came to their possessions not by outright stealing of public money, but rather by exploiting business prospects created by loopholes in the country’s antiquated conflict of interest law.
Landu Kama, coordinator of the Coalition for Reconciliation, Transparency and Citizenship (Coligação pela Reconciliação, Transparência e Cidadania), a non-profit pro-democracy group, comments, “Everyone around the president has big business here and abroad. These are special Angolans. The rest of Angolans are just part of the landscape.”
Exactly how many “non-special” Angolans are there? With only the elite possessing privileged access to secure property rights and bank loans for business ventures, the majority of the Angolan population can’t improve their livelihoods and remain in the informal sector, especially pervasive among the urban poor. Research shows that in Angola’s urban economy 43% of people are informally self-employed, 16% are unpaid family workers, and 6% are involved in other types of informal business.
Even though parliamentary elections in Angola look likely and presidential elections were tentatively scheduled for 2008, to date there has been little movement for the post-election reforms. President José Eduardo dos Santos (in power for 28 years) is expected to run and win, given that the opposition is weak and co-opted. One can only hope that the many informal entrepreneurs will work together to point out to the authorities the legal and administrative hurdles that handicap them — and advocate for change. This is what CIPE partner informal sector organizations have done successfully in Senegal and Kenya.
Published Date: October 16, 2007