ANGOLA: TOWARDS SUPREMACY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA? (original) (raw)

Angola’s Elections and the Politics of Presidential Succession

African Affairs, 2018

Shortly after the government’s2002 victory against UNITA rebels in the country’s long civil war, Angola became the fastest growing economy in the world. Oil production shot up from one million to just under two million barrels a day between 2002 and 2008, with the price of oil jumping from around 20to20 to 20to147 in the same period. GDP increased tenfold between 2002 and 2013, making Angola sub-Saharan Africa’s third largest economy at $121 billion. Armed with unprecedented oil revenues that paid for infrastructure expenditure and the hiring of hundreds of thousands of expatriates, a strategic alliance with China, and hegemonic control of post-war Angola, the ruling MPLA proceeded to enact a self-styled national reconstruction agenda and assertive foreign policy. Although the capital-intensive policies adopted by the government were presented in developmental...

The New Order of Power in Angola: from José Eduardo dos Santos to João Lourenço

2020

An analysis of the current political situation in Angola, requires an understanding of the functional dynamics of João Lourenço's governance, clearly marked by a conflict between MPLA's political and economic elites. For this purpose, we established a conceptual and technical explanatory framework, constituted by the institutional conditions of the State (State apparatus), societal (social bodies), political (elite pact) and conjunctural conditions (internal political, economic and social situation marked by the price of oil in international markets).

Angola: Prospects for Peace and Prosperity

2003

The peace process begun in March 2002, and which was seemingly the consequence of the death in combat of the leader of UNITA, Dr Jonas Savimbi, was primarily the result of the MPLA's military success in its last offensive in December 2001 and its scorched earth policy, which compounded UNITA's weaknesses. Savimbi's death, however, acted as a catalyst and probably sped up the subsequent developments, which included a virtually immediate ceasefire between the ruling MPLA and rebel UNITA movement in Angola and the resumption of a peace process that stalled for the best part of a decade. These new, positive developments in Angola also coincide with the apparent culmination of the rash of conflicts that sprung up across Africa in the late 1990s, expressed as a so-called 'arc of crisis' from Sudan in the east to Angola and Sierra Leone in the west. No single conflict best characterised this destabilising upsurge than that in the Congo, drawing in six nations and around a dozen different protagonists in what was termed 'Africa's First World War'. Angola has long been a military power in Southern Africa, its ma rtial abilities backed up by a willingness to utilise force within and outside of its own borders. It has the potential to match this capacity in the economic realm. It is the second-largest oil producer in Africa. The current production of 900,000 barrels-per-day will double by 2007, to a level that Nigeria produces today, though Angola has only one-tenth of Nigeria's population. Oil comprises 42% of GDP, 80% of government earnings, and 90% of export earnings. Angola is also the fourth-largest producer of diamonds worldwide , with an estimated annual income of US$700-800 million, a figure which could rise with the envisaged ending of the marketing monopoly held by the Ascorp corporation. War and bad government has meant, however, that little of this wealth has reached Angola's 13 million people. While defence expenditure has consumed over 41% of central government expenditure in 1999, compared with 24.

Bravo M. E., Yakushik V. Angola towards development: now is the time to invest. In: National Interest Academic Journal. 2021. Vol. 1. No. 3. P. 1-11.

National Interest Academic Journal, 2021

From the interview of Manuel Eduardo Bravo, Ambassador of the Republic of Angola to India, concurrently accredited to Thailand & Malaysia, given to Professor Valentin Yakushik, the readers will get a distinct overview of the multifaceted history of Angola since the 1960s up to the present. Special emphasis has been laid on the trajectory to the Independence in 1975 and, subsequently, on the measures undertaken towards peace, security and stability in Angola and in Southern Africa. The interview provides an insight into the evolution of Angola over the last six decades and the impact of the Cold War on the Angolan polity. Besides, it offers a perceptive and reflective analysis of the past, present and future challenges and prospects for Angola and its role as a critical stakeholder in the process of building peace and stability in Africa. To conclude the interview, Ambassador Bravo makes a persuasive case that private investments from all over the world, particularly from India and South-East Asia, would be welcome and paramount in the ongoing diversification of the Angolan economy. (https://sc01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/NIT/article/view/240019/163663)

Reform or unravel? Prospects for Angola’s transition

2017

2017 elections amid a deep financial crisis, internal factionalism within the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola and strong opposition demands. Reform is necessary to dismantle the pillars of the current governing strategy that have become unstable and have weakened the security apparatus, have politicised the economy and oil industry, have weakened the ruling party and have increased the levels of repression. This report focuses on the emerging faultlines Angola is facing as the Dos Santos era comes to an end.

Angola: reinventing pasts and futures

Review of African Political Economy, 2011

Angola’s leadership, having triumphed militarily and politically over domestic and foreign adversaries, now enjoys popular consent at home and fulsome courtesies abroad thanks to skillful statecraft and a lot of petrodollars. Having abandoned social ideals of the past, it has set about inventing a post-war order that combines neoliberalism with suave repression. Today’s model, not unlike the colonial order of yesterday, is geared to redistributing wealth upward and outward. Yet in contrast to the past, it has little place for Angolans, whose expectations nonetheless keep rising. Not far off, however, is the end of the petrodollar gusher on which elite pacts depend. Political strife, but also opportunities to revisit those abandoned social ideals, may soon present themselves.