Angola's poor wait for oil wealth to trickle down
Mon Oct 10, 2005
By Peter Apps
HUAMBO, Angola (Reuters) - Angola may be sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer but in a town still devastated by decades of brutal fighting, 67-year-old Armando Tiago says he has seen very little of the cash.
"If it did come here, everything would be OK," Tiago, who lost an arm to a landmine as he foraged for food in 1988, told Reuters in the central Angolan city of Huambo.
"But that is not what happens. We have schools and things are better, but we still have no jobs, no work. We are poor."
Post-war investment, peace and rising oil prices are expected to push Angola's economic growth above 15 percent in 2005. But malnutrition remains rife, almost half of all children do not attend school and a quarter die by the age of five.
Since 27 years of civil war ended in 2002, international donors have become increasingly reluctant to fund aid projects in Angola -- often citing its massive oil wealth.
Some senior aid workers say they may abandon projects if the government does not contribute more cash itself.
There are signs of change in the former Portuguese colony, where the war destroyed not just lives but the very foundations of the country, leaving vast areas cut off.
While some Western businessmen say privately that corruption has fallen off since the end of the war, others say that particularly in the construction sector it is rising fast.
In the capital, Luanda, the division is stark between slum dwellers and those who have made money from oil and commerce and who roar around town in four-wheel drive vehicles.
"One of the nice things about being an expatriate in Angola is that you don't get much hassle," said one Western aid worker. "Everyone knows the rich Angolans have more money than we do."
OVERBOOKED HOTELS, OVERCROWDED SLUMS
Money is pouring into Luanda. Hotels are overbooked -- some oil companies are said to book 20 rooms every night just in case they need to fly in executives or engineers in a hurry -- and seats on the daily flight from Johannesburg are hard to get.
Alongside oil giants like Chevron, mineral firms such as De Beers and diversified Anglo-Australian miner BHP Billiton are scouring Angola's previously inaccessible interior for gold, diamonds and copper.
Expatriates flock to drink overpriced beer and imported wine and spirits in the city's beachside clubs and bars to the sounds of a mix of Western, Angolan and Brazilian music.
The slums on the edge of the capital remain desperately overcrowded, with poor water supplies and intermittent outbreaks of typhoid and malaria. Pools of sewage lie around and roads are so badly maintained they are impassable when it rains.
Residents are increasingly banding together to demand better services and they say things are slowly getting better. Electricians and builders say they have more work, often as people improve or rebuild their shacks.
Building materials swiftly sell out in markets in Luanda where people are building new offices, restaurants and hotels or extending their shacks in the slums.
But in many parts of the country, little progress has been made since the death of rebel UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, whose house in Huambo still lies in ruins after a government air strike, triggered the end of the war.
Poor roads and destroyed railways have cut off many towns, making commercial farming or industry unviable and leaving the population to suffer starvation, sickness and isolation.
"We hear of towns that are completely cut off but we've been unable to reach them," Helen Gray, project officer for demining charity HALO Trust, told Reuters.
In many settlements in what was once said to be the jewel of Portugal's empire, European-style buildings still have plumbing systems and most streets have lights, but often neither has worked for decades.
SOLAR TRAFFIC LIGHTS
Listless adults and children who have trekked in from isolated rural areas lie in Huambo's hospital. Many are seriously malnourished. Across the cool, central plateau, over half of all children have been permanently stunted by hunger.
But there are signs of change. Some street lights are back in action and a couple of sets of solar-powered traffic lights are working. The railway to the coast is being rebuilt.
While most buildings still bear the scars of tough, street-by-street fighting in the final years of the war, many are being rebuilt. A cellphone store thrives on the ground floor of a building still missing its roof.
A motorcycle factory has opened in the town, boosting local employment, and new schools and municipal offices are opening. Much of Angola's reconstruction is being fuelled by a $2 billion (1.1 billion pound) loan from China secured against oil revenues.
Observers say the loan, which will also fund transport repairs opening up whole tracts of the country, could help boost the ruling MPLA ahead of elections scheduled for September 2006.
Thousands of Chinese labourers have been flown in -- some say the number of Chinese nationals here may one day reach 4 million -- and road-building and construction sites are buzzing.
But some, like Tiago, want more.
"Things have improved a bit," he told Reuters in the yard of the newly opened school his children attend.
"But there is still a lot of need. The government could do a lot more, both in terms of schools and education."
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