The warring factions in global development

More and more we see two maybe three different sets of methods of global development waring against each other. China, the west, and sometimes Brazil fight to prove who is doing the most good.

China will help countries develop as long as they get something in return. The West demands changes to other countries so their markets will soon see something in return. While Brazil seems intent on showing other nations what has worked for them. They are new to this process, so we have yet to see what they will get in return.

We see this contrast in a big way in the country of Angola. China develops fast, yet few
Angolans are pleased with their work. Brazil cooperates with the Angolan people on development, yet it makes it harder for them to do it on their own. Inter Press Service writer Mario Osava gives us this on the ground viewpoint. 

Today, 35 years later, it is the excesses and glaring contrasts that shock the visitor to this city in southwestern Africa. Shiny new cars on brand-new roads and highways lined by thousands of still-empty or half-built office buildings, apartment blocks and residential towers stand in sharp contrast to the sprawling slums around the city.

Signs on construction sites written in Chinese clearly reflect the Asian giant’s high level of participation in the construction of today’s new Angola.

The most ambitious project carried out by companies from China is the Nova Cidade de Kilamba (Kilamba New City), a huge development designed to house half a million people, 20 km south of downtown Luanda.

When it is completed, the new neighbourhood will have more than 80,000 apartments built for large families – the norm in Angola – in buildings five to 13 storeys high. The development is also to be fitted out with dozens of schools, child care centres, health clinics and shops.

Nearly one-quarter of the buildings have been completed. But almost all of them are empty, even though more than 3,000 apartments were already available when the development was inaugurated in July 2011.

Also involved in building the new city are Brazilian firms, especially construction giant Odebrecht, which is in charge of key projects like electricity and water grids and the construction of roads.

The foreign presence in the massive new developments “is not something to be admired, because it shows that there are no national companies with the capacity to build them,” said one of Angola’s most prominent writers, Artur Pestana, better known as Pepetela, who is also a professor of sociology.

“The Chinese build faster, they work round-the-clock shifts, and they offer almost interest-free long-term loans,” he said. But they employ few Angolan workers and “there are many complaints about the quality of their construction work,” he added.

Meanwhile, Brazilian companies “apparently learned their lesson from a few initial fiascos which made them the butt of national jokes, and they now stand out for the quality of their work,” which enables them to compete with the Chinese, said the author, who has published many historical novels that are critical of the government of José Eduardo dos Santos, president since 1979.

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It was the first non-oil company from Brazil to begin to operate in Angola with a “long-term outlook,” said Victor Fontes, director general of the Angolan company Elektra, which specialises in power and water grids. He said this had the positive effect of attracting other firms also interested in the long haul, instead of just short-term opportunities.

The director of institutional relations at Odebrecht Angola, Alexandre Assaf, told IPS that the consortium is committed to “continuity” in Angola, above and beyond the effects of wars or the global economic crisis.

Five years ago, only nine percent of the “strategic posts” in the company were held by Angolans – a proportion that has risen to 41 percent, he noted, to illustrate the company’s commitment to local development.

New survey measures progress for Angola's children

From the Voice of America, a new survey shows the progress on giving children good health and education in Angola.

A national survey conducted jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund and the government of Angola shows a mixed bag of progress in health and essential services for children since Angola's long-running civil war ended in 2002.

The survey shows Angola has made good progress in five of the eight Millennium Development Goals. UNICEF Angola Representative, Koen Vanormelingen, says malnutrition rates have gone down, more Angolan children are enrolled in primary school than ever before and almost as many girls as boys are going to school.

He says child survival has improved by almost 20 percent and the proportion of child deaths due to malaria has gone down from 35 to 23 percent.

"There is emerging data now that thanks to consistent economic growth of more than seven percent per year since 2002 and to tremendous efforts and investments of the government in rehabilitation and revitalization, plus a consistent 30 percent of the budget for the social sector, there seems to be now the first data coming out that there is an improvement," he said.

Nevertheless, Dr. Vanormelingen says there are setbacks. While progress is being made in child survival, he says maternal mortality has not improved very much. He says far too many women continue dying in childbirth because there are not enough skilled birth attendants.

He says access to basic social services remains low, particularly for health and birth registration. He says water and sanitation is worsening. He warns this, combined with continued poverty, could jeopardize the gains made in child survival and development.

"Now the two main problems that Angola is facing to continue to make progress is on one hand, the fact that 87 percent of people live in slums," he said. "And, be it in urban or in rural areas, 60 percent are living for less than $2 a day… It is a very unequal society and that is a major problem. And, if they cannot solve that in the short run, it will contribute to create problems," he explained.

Dr. Vanormelingen says Angola has done the easy part of rebuilding roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure. He says the hard part is to improve skills and to improve human capital.

He urges the government to continue to invest at least 30 percent in the social sector. And, he says, more investments must be made in social protection to reduce poverty. He adds investing in improving the skills of young people will guarantee a bright future.

Oil unrest in the Cambinda region of Angola

The Cambinda portion of Angola is an oil rich region, and similar to neighboring country Nigeria it causes a lot of unrest. People are tired of not seeing any benefits from all of the oil-production, so some have even resorted to violence. However, there is little reason for the oil companies to be concerned about the unrest, because most of the oil drilling is offshore, beyond the reach of any militants.

From Reuters India, writer Henrique Almeida profiles the Cambinda region of Angola.

For the half a million residents of the impoverished territory, the oil has brought few benefits. The region caught international attention in early January when FLEC rebels ambushed the bus of Togo's visiting soccer team, killing two.

"Cabindans are tired of not seeing the oil money," said Martinho Nombo, a former vice-governor of Cabinda who is now a lawyer and university professor. "Ever since FLEC carried out the attack in January tensions have been rising."

FLEC, or Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda, has been locked in three decades of mostly low-level insurgency against the government.

Heavily armed police have been seen patrolling the streets of Cabinda months after the rebel attack.

"We don't want to speak about FLEC. That is being treated within the realm of international terrorism," Mawete Joao Baptista, the governor of Cabinda, told Reuters.

"Our attention at the moment is focused on the economy and improving the lives of Cabindans."

His urgency has a reason: both FLEC rebels and ordinary Cabindans claim to see little of the money that comes from their land.

60 percent of Angolans in poverty

A speech made yesterday by Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos claimed that 60 percent of the countries population lives in poverty. President dos Santos blames a long civil war and a history of colonialism for the Angola's woes.

From Reuters we read a quote from President dos Santos and some goals he hopes will help the country climb out of poverty.

The government's top priority is to end widespread poverty, he said, blaming part of Angola's condition on its colonial past and a civil war that erupted immediately after independence from Portugal in 1975 and which only ended in 2002.

Since then, the ruling MPLA has been rebuilding Angola on the back of record oil exports and multi-billion dollar loans from China. But Angola still ranks as one of the world's 18 most graft-ridden nations, according to Transparency International.

Poverty has remained roughly the same since the end of the 27-year civil war, when the World Bank said almost two-thirds of Angolans lived on less than $2 a day.

Dos Santos is banking on a $1.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund -- designed to bolster Angola's foreign exchange reserves and social spending -- and rising oil prices and exports to improve the lives of ordinary Angolans.

Angola rivals Nigeria as Africa's biggest oil producer. The government is expected to spend almost a third of its $36 billion 2010 budget on health, education and housing. It also plans to build one million new homes for the poor in five years.

Angola's fight to restore life after decades of war

Just coming off of a three decade long civil war, Angola has a lot of work to do to improve life in the country. Once ranked the worst for child well being in the world, there has been a little improvement since the war ended in 2002.

From the IPS, reporter Louise Redvers fills us in on the slow progress to restore services in Angola.

Angola is ranked 16th in the world for child mortality. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), one in six children here die before they reach their fifth birthday - the main causes of death being malaria, respiratory infections, diarrhoea and other infections.

The ranking, although dire, is at least some improvement from the 2001 count of one in four - which had Angola ranked worst in the world - but there is still some way to go if the country is to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing child mortality by two thirds.

Angola’s high child mortality rates are a direct hangover from the country’s three-decade-long civil war, which ended in 2002.

The few health services which existed for Angolans before they gained independence from Portugal in 1975 when the conflict began were soon decimated, and despite its enormous oil and diamond wealth, the country was wracked by poverty.

Millions fled the countryside, where landmines rendered agricultural land useless, and moved to Luanda, now home to an estimated seven million people. The majority lives in shantytowns, known in Angola as musseques, with little access to running water or sanitation.

Since the end of the war, government has undergone a programme of national reconstruction, literally rebuilding or building from scratch all public services.

In addition to building new hospitals and clinics, there has been a focus on training community health workers to promote basic household health, such as hand-washing, water treatment and sleeping under a mosquito net.

New statistics from UNICEF, Angola’s Ministry of Health and the World Bank are due to be published jointly later this year and will be the litmus test to see if government spending has been making a difference.

It will also help government hone in on the worst problem areas and target its spending.

Koen Vanormelingen, UNICEF representative in Angola, believes there has been tremendous progress: "The government is really committed, and it is putting its money where its mouth is. There is of course a time laps between the moment interventions are implemented and when you see the results in terms of lower mortality."

"We are strong believers that Angola will be able to meet their MDGs for reducing child mortality," he said optimistically.

The everyday reality of poverty in Angola's musseques, where children play among piles of litter and stagnant water breeds diseases, seems a long way off Vanormelingen’s colourful statistical bulletins, however.

Acknowledging this, he said: "There is so much to be done at the same time that it gives the impression of anarchy and inefficiencies, but I do believe there is a sense of strategy and direction."

Odds and Ends: Chevron, Angola and microcredit

A story we passed over earlier this week was brought back to our attention today by a blog post at The ONE Campaign. Chevron recently signed an agreement with USAID to help boost Angola's economy. Chevron already has a large oil concern in the country. Now the donations of money to USAID will help improve other areas of Angola's economy.

First let's get the news story, from San Francisco Times business reporter Elizabeth Rauber.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton witnessed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the project in Angola’s capital, Luanda. According to the document, the partnership will support financial, educational, technical and training services to improve the viability of small and medium scale farmers in the southern African state.

According to Chevron spokesman Scott Walker, the MOU is an extension to the $56 million Angola Partnership Initiative, created in 2002. The original partnership was comprised of a $25 million investment by Chevron, and $31 million from USAID and other development organizations. The new MOU focuses on agricultural initiatives to increase yield and market share for small to medium scale farmers. This new agreement follows a 5-year, $5.6 million Agriculture Development and Finance Program that commenced in 2006.

Chevron didn’t say how much it will put into this program.

Now, a clarification on what the MOI will actually do for Angola from the ONE Campaign's Beth Adler.

As Secretary Clinton mentioned in her remarks, part of this investment will be directed towards smallholder farmers in an effort to boost agricultural productivity. Often oil-producers invest in support for non-oil business in order to bolster social and political stability in a country, which also helps protect their oil-related investments. The Memorandum of Understanding that was signed will provide continuity for the $56 million Angola Partnership Initiative between USAID, Chevron, and other partners that supports initiatives on education, food security, government capacity building, and small business development.

And also, the Wall Street Journal has a story today on the microcredit "bubble". Some economists cant figure out why microcredit is still running strong despite the global recession. The Wall Street Journal however is a subscription website, so we were unale to devote a single post to it.

In a reaction to the news story, Charlotte Connors knows very well why microcredit is sucsessful. We found her explanation at Accion International's blog.

Twenty-seven industry leaders and more than six hundred MFI’s, Investors, Donors, Networks and Associations have gotten behind the Campaign for Client Protection in Microfinance. First announced at the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2008, the Campaign, under the leadership of the Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), seeks to unite microfinance providers worldwide to develop and implement standards for the appropriate treatment of low-income clients, based on six principles, which the Campaign aims to embed within the fabric of the microfinance community. The first of these principles is avoidance of over-indebtedness (which has the subject of the WSJ article).

The Campaign aims to develop norms, knowledge and tools that will help MFIs develop and maintain a rigorous focus on client welfare. The first of such tools, available online, is a Client Protection Questionnaire that provides a detailed self-assessment of controls currently in place.

The oil curse of Angola and Nigeria

As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Angola and Nigeria, it's worth another look at how oil does little to improve the lives of people there. Politicians take all of the money from oil revenues for themselves. The money and the oil make the keep the politicians from having to court voters to keep their jobs, as the two countries are democracies only in name.

Clinton is visiting the area in an effort to improve relations with the two countries. The US hopes to purchase more oil from Africa instead of relying on the Middle East.

From this Associated Press article that is hosted at Google News, Katharine Houreld does another piece on the curse of oil.

Nigeria has a history of coups and the last elections here were marred by voting irregularities and police firing tear gas at lines of voters. In Angola's last parliamentary election, money, alcohol and even cars were dished out and many polling stations didn't open for lack of materials, international observers found. Angola was in civil war from the 1970s to 2002. It has not held presidential elections since the war ended.

Just last week, Global Witness, a London-based watchdog group, reported that several shareholders of a private firm authorized by Angola's state oil company to bid for lucrative contracts have the same names as top current and former Angolan officials, including the state oil company chairman. The officials have not responded to repeated requests from Global Witness and reporters for a response.

"Despite the widespread perception that government corruption at all levels was endemic, there were no public investigations or prosecutions of government officials during the year," said a report this year by the U.S. State Department.

More than two-thirds of 12 million Angolans and more than four-fifths of 150 million Nigerians live on less than $2 a day. Many feel neglected by their leaders.

"They don't care about the small man. Not at all," said Sam Olufemi, selling phone cards amid one of Lagos' perennial traffic jams. "It's pay-as-you-go politics."

Angola has suffered unrest in Cabinda, the main oil-producing region. Human rights groups have accused the military of atrocities and claim government officials have embezzled millions of dollars in oil revenue. The government has denied the charges.

Thousands have been killed over the years in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta, where the military battles criminal gangs by firing into slums from helicopter gunships and militant groups bomb pipelines and kidnap foreigners.

Land of the state, home of the poor

from the Globe and Mail

by STEPHANIE NOLEN

LUANDA — For sale in a mediocre neighbourhood of Luanda: pokey two-bedroom apartment in a Soviet-style 1960s apartment block. Fourteenth floor, elevator last operated in 1990. Erratic plumbing, no maintenance in the past 22 years. Asking $300,000 (U.S.) And that's about all you're going to get in Luanda for $300,000: Any new one-bedroom apartment in this city starts at $1-million.

Luanda recently snatched the title of "most expensive" away from better-known capitals such as London, Oslo and Tokyo, according to a number of international surveys. The tide of petrodollars surging into the once sleepy port has created a property boom like no other.

Office space in the centre of the congested city sells for about $8,000 a square metre. A well-renovated, two-bedroom apartment downtown rents for $15,000 a month. Luanda is squeezed into a little patch of seafront land, and developers have their eyes on every bit of it that is not presently clad in scaffolding.

But they have a problem: Much of the prime land in the city is covered by musseques, informal settlements that grew up when millions of Angolans poured into Luanda seeking safety during the country's three-decade civil war. Today, the land they occupy is worth billions of dollars as the country's economy grows by more than 20 per cent a year on the strength of vast oil reserves and virgin diamond mines.

More than three-quarters of Luanda's residents, nearly four million people, live in the informal settlements, and these are grim. Most have no sanitation services; people must buy water from tanker trucks for nearly $1 a bucket. Infant and maternal mortality rates are some of the worst in the world. Many of the slums have no schools; when they do, they lack teachers, desks and books.

The government has an initiative under way to move people from the worst settlements and into new houses, but these are built in planned communities 30 kilometres or more outside the city (where affordable land is available). The slum dwellers complain that, out there, they are deprived of all opportunity to do the informal trading through which most earn a living in the city.

"If they take me to a faraway place, how am I going to survive? I might have a better house, but can I eat the walls?" asked Miquel Domingos Vunge, 34, a security guard who must also work selling used shoes and as a porter in the market in order to feed his two daughters.

They live in a two-metre by two-metre shack, built of sheet metal and nails held in place with beer bottle caps, in Boa Vista. The slum is built on a heap of garbage next to some of the city's most upscale residences, and abuts the Luanda port, which is being dramatically expanded to service the snarl of oil tankers in the harbour.

The government, possibly concerned about Mr. Vunge's precarious home but certainly pushed by developers (who are often partners with senior officials), is keen to move the likes of him and his neighbours: Human Rights Watch documented 18 mass evictions, which displaced an estimated 20,000 people and destroyed 3,000 houses, between 2002 and 2006. The evictions then slowed as the government geared up for a historic election held on the weekend, but forced removals are widely expected to resume now that the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola has been returned to office in a landslide.

Yet some people here say there is a solution that would work for everybody: Give slum dwellers such as Mr. Vunge title to their land. Then the next resort developer or condominium project that comes through will have to buy it, putting money into the pockets of the evicted squatters instead of driving them penniless off the only real asset they have.

"Of course change is going to come to the city, everyone knows this and accepts this," said Willy Piassa, who manages an urban-poverty program for Development Workshop, Angola's oldest aid organization. "But what we're trying to get people talking about is how this change should happen. We are talking about land title, not just expropriating. It means paying fair compensation."

This question of giving the poor title to squatted land has come up in other parts of the developing world, and has been tried with varying success. Mr. Piassa and his colleagues argue that Luanda is a good environment for it, because there are large amounts of money available, both public and private, and many skilled entrepreneurs in the informal sector who could do a great deal with a small cash infusion.

His organization is working with government to draft new land-title legislation, and he said the idea has been well received by some senior government figures. None were available to speak about the issue, a sensitive one in the days around the election.

Activists such as Mr. Piassa say giving people new houses and title to the land on which they are built is one important step, but also unfair, given that multimillion-dollar condominiums and hotels will go on the land where slums are demolished, and developers will profit hugely.

"The question is, can you do this in way which benefits not just a small group of people, but a lot of people? I think so." What's more, he said, the government has an opportunity to help people out of poverty by making sure the property rights of slum dwellers are recognized; the state could effect a wealth transfer that would allow people to better educate their children, or to invest capital in a small business.

"If they gave me some money, as well as a house, then I could earn a living," said Mr. Vunge, who thinks he could expand his shoe business into a second-hand clothing shop.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Milford church reaches out to African friends

from the Cabinet Press

A great story about a woman's mission trip to Angola. A church in New Hampshire helped to arrange the trip. - Kale

By ELIZABETH ROTCH

“How was your trip?”

We went to Africa. Of course people want to know about it. By now I should have prepared a ready answer, but I have not.

I try to respond: It was eye-opening, heart-rending, exciting, humbling … awesome! But the words seem so inadequate.

Six members of the Church of Our Saviour, Milford — Martha Manley, Frank Manley, Dawn Formica, Richard Formica, and the Rev. Chip Robinson, and I, accompanied by Susan Lassen of Portsmouth, director of NetsforLife — were on a mission. A mission to see and learn more about our companion parish, St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Ondjiva, Angola.

We have been working toward this for so long. Waiting six weeks for a visa – it arrived less than a week before our departure – only added to the nervous anticipation.

It has been two years since we agreed to enter into partnership with St. Andrew’s Church, and a year since Cynthia Efird, then the U.S. ambassador to Angola, visited Milford.

An Angola study group, about 20 members of the parish, has been meeting monthly this year. We’ve had book discussions, shared menus, watched movies, hosted an Angolan student from Southern New Hampshire University and plied her with questions. And still, we had very little that told us what to expect.

Angola is not a tourist destination. Its 27-year civil war ended in 2002. More than 1.5 million people were killed, 4 million were displaced, and much of the infrastructure was damaged or destroyed. Although it produces more oil than any other country in Africa, most of Angola’s people live in extreme poverty. Its infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world.

I went to an online tourism site and typed in Ondjiva, Angola, where I found “There is nothing to see in Ondjiva.”

That is not true.

We found generous and hospitable people, congregations worshipping with joy and enthusiasm under trees and in the most primitive buildings, and an Anglican church that is working hard to make life better for the Angolans, through malaria prevention education, distribution and training in use of mosquito nets, HIV/AIDS education, loans for micro-enterprise projects, and wells, bringing water to neighborhoods whose residents had walked literally miles to fetch water for their families.

After almost three days on airplanes or in airports, we arrived in Angola’s capital city, Luanda. Diocesan staff met us and shepherded us through the airport. We stayed overnight in the city, just long enough to arise at 4 a.m. to catch yet another flight, the one that would take us to Ondjiva.

That flight had no reserved seats. I was looking for a place near our group when it occurred to me that it was a little silly. There was a young mother and a baby next to an empty seat. I asked if I could sit there; she said yes. While the woman was trying to get her packages squared away, I took the baby, and held her until we took off. Like so many of the young girls we would meet, she had dozens of tiny braids, each one decorated with a pink or white plastic ornament.

Airports, no matter where they are, seem very much the same: simple enough to navigate if you know the airport and speak the language, a little more complicated if you do not. As in Luanda, the Anglicans came through for us in Ondjiva.

Mario dos Santos, the development director for the diocese, had traveled with us from Luanda. Fr. Elias Mbale of St. Andrew’s met us at the airport. He exists! Short, slight, he seemed very happy to meet us. Tony, who would be our guide, interpreter and driver, loaded us into the Toyota Land Cruiser we would come to know well over the next few days.

He took us to our guesthouse where we had breakfast – omelets, bread, coffee -- and filled out immigration papers at the office.

We wanted to change some money, and because it was Saturday and the banks were closed, Tony took us to a large outdoor market. Boys swarmed the car when they found out what we wanted, ready to sell us all the kwanzas we would buy, at 75 kwanzas to the dollar.

The business concluded, we took time to walk around the market. I wondered if those women, these children, that group of boys, would allow us to take their pictures. Allow? Once we started, we were swamped by people begging to have us take their pictures. And they were all very anxious to see the images in the digital camera.

On the way back from the market we stopped to meet Gabi and to see the well at his home. The water needs to be treated with purification tablets, but it is right there. Drop in the bucket and pull up water!

We had a chance to rest for a little while before we went to St. Andrew’s. I had a room to myself, a real treat. I had expected much more primitive accommodations, at least a shared bathroom. The room had two beds, a private bathroom with running hot and cold water and a shower, and electricity. I had an outlet where I could charge my camera battery. I also had a television I never watched, an air conditioner I never turned on, and a refrigerator I never used.

I took a silk sleeping bag liner, which I used, not because I did not trust the sheets provided, but because it felt so good to slip into the silkiness at night after a hot day in the bush. I was glad that I had packed my small, fluffy pillow, and my shake-up flashlight came in handy once or twice when the power went off for a few minutes.

But enough of that. We were off to St. Andrew’s, where we were met by two or three dozen people of all ages, singing and dancing. We were greeted, we were welcomed, we were urged to dance. We were deeply moved.

There is a school next to the church, built by the Germans. A couple of days before our arrival the wind took off the roof. It’s almost an abstract sculpture, the corrugated zinc making a dramatic curve above the building.

We went to Fr. Mbale’s office and saw the fax machine we had bought for him. Although we had thought it was not being used – we had not had a fax from him, after all – we discovered it is a valuable tool that has proven very helpful in his work.

On Sunday, we attended church at St. Andrew’s, a service that lasted four hours.

Fr. Chip presented the altar cloth. Then he gave Fr. Mbale the stole and chasuble the women of Church of Our Saviour had stitched. I believe it is the first chasuble he has had. He seemed very touched.

Fr. Chip was the celebrant; Martha assisted as the LEM (Lay Eucharistic Minister). Not more than a dozen people took communion, and that included our group. I believe that no one who had not been confirmed could receive communion. However, every child in the congregation came forward to receive a blessing, and they were soon joined by adults. The line went on and on. Following that, there was another long line for those who wanted a healing prayer.

Not a lot of men attended church. Busy? Not interested? Lost to war?

Fr. Chip also baptized eight children.

The offering was another opportunity for worshippers to show their generosity and joyous worship. No, the plate was not passed. Rather, each person came forward, singing and dancing, to put money in the basket. Then a parade of women brought baskets of gifts to the altar: eggs, sorghum, peanuts, soda, grain.

The Peace took forever, because everyone shook hands, if not with each other, with us.

We decided we had enough paper doves to give to everyone, not just the children. The doves were made by members of our parish, each with one of the gifts of the Spirit written in English and in Portuguese. They were very well received. Women attached them to earrings, girls put them on their skirts, boys tied them to buttonholes. Even on our last night in Ondjiva, some people arrived with their paper doves.

It was quite an experience, being surrounded by people reaching for these symbols of the relationship between two such distant and disparate parishes. The partnership was becoming real. Even as we prayed for St. Andrew’s every Sunday, it was a nebulous concept, names we recognized, but without substance. Now we were putting faces to the names, and so were the Angolans.

We had been invited to a feast following the service. The table was set up in the NetsforLife building, with lace tablecloths, dishes, silverware. We had boiled potatoes, French fries, rice salad and meat. Pig? Goat? I thought it was the goat we saw in the yard the previous day, but the ribs seemed too big. There was plenty of bottled water, soda and wine.

Nightfall comes early and quite abruptly; there is no long twilight period. But, oh, there are stars in the sky. With so few lights on the ground, we could see the stars clearly. I wish I could recognize some constellations besides the Southern Cross.

Fr. Mbale has 16 congregations, stretched across Cunene Province in southern Angola. We visited several of them. In Namacunde, we went to the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude, under a tree. The altar was set up with linens, flanked by plastic chairs for the visitors. Logs provide seating for the congregations under the trees, as they did for the churches like the one we visited at Ombwelwa and at All Saints that are, well, stick buildings.

There must have been 80 people at All Saints. Where did they come from? We rode through nearly trackless bush to reach the church. We saw very little evidence of habitation, and yet, everywhere we went, people showed up. (There was just one exception. When we arrived at Santa Clara, there was a generator and sound system, but very few people. Someone’s timetable was skewed.)

Everywhere we stopped, we were welcomed, not by a polite greeter standing at the doorway, but by every single person. The women, especially, sang and danced and ululated. All of the congregations had choirs that performed most of the time we were there. Clearly they had practiced, and some of them were very good indeed.

Every congregation we visited offered us food. Food provides nourishment, but in our experience in Angola, food meant hospitality.

In a place where 60 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, and the average income is maybe $50 a month – and while each of us carried enough cash to take us through Angola and home again – we were fed an array of dishes and beverages. Even in the bush, there was a spread: foufou (a sort of thick porridge-like dish made of maize or sorghum, often eaten with the fingers) with a sauce for dipping, meat or chicken, some sort of fermented drink. We could only guess the level of sacrifice the gifts represented. It was humbling.

From churches in the bush to the Bishop’s house in Luanda, never were we offered food without being provided with a basin of soap and water with which to wash our hands. (How often in this country do we stop somewhere for lunch, and think about washing only after we have eaten and our hands are sticky?)

Ondjiva is in Cunene Province, near the Namibian border. In Ondjiva, there are not a lot private cars; there are taxis. Vehicular traffic on the roads leading out of town is light, although there are always people walking.

All that changes near the border. Huge trucks queue up to cross into Namibia, cars wait to fill up at the gas station, stores and banks line the road, and people stream by in both directions. People on foot head into Namibia, crossing the border empty-handed and returning heavy-laden. Multi-tasking women, toting their loads on their heads, and their babies on their backs or at their breasts. Men and women, boys and girls, all carrying great loads. We saw a boy on a bike with two huge net bags of cabbages, and two people each carrying a mattress, and of course, lots of young money changers.

When we stopped to buy water and oranges for lunch, Tony had us close the windows. Too easy for someone to grab a camera or snatch an earring, he said.

Our last night at St. Andrew’s turned out to be a real celebration. Tony had told us there would be music. He did not tell us that he was a master of ceremonies extraordinaire. There was a sound system and lights. Long before we went into the church we could hear the music and singing. Probably they could hear it in Namacunde!

We had a service: singing, prayers, some words from Fr. Chip. The Angolans sing “Gloria hallelujah” so we sang “the Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and everyone joined in for the chorus. Much better than “Amazing Grace” that we had attempted earlier.

Susan Lassen presented the 10 chairs a donor had purchased for the church. Frank Manley spoke about our promise of continued commitment to St. Andrew’s, reiterating the fact that it is a partnership between parishes, not just the individuals who made the trip. Dick Formica was surprised by Fr. Mbale’s request that he lead a prayer, but he did us proud.

We received gifts, cloth and carvings, including one for Bishop Robinson. The singing continued, with “Happy Birthday” to Fr. Mbale in two languages, and we all sang and danced for a long time. Yes, we all danced and sang, and shook hands or hugged everyone in the church. It was a wonderful, joyful, uplifting way to end our visit to St. Andrew’s.

Our final dinner in Ondjiva was at Fr. Mbale’s house, where we dined on goat that had been cooked on a charcoal fire in the yard. Issa, Elias’s wife, did not eat with us -- none of the women ever has – but neither did she join in the general energy and joy of the other women who danced in the doorway the whole time we were there.

Fr. Mbale, Issa, Johanna and Julia were at the Ondjiva airport to see us off, and again, Tony and Elias helped us navigate through the bureaucracy.

Luanda is a pretty depressed city. On the one hand, there are tall, modern buildings, and a harbor filled with oil tankers. There are also lots and lots of shacks with cement block walls and corrugated zinc roofs. There also are many satellite dishes, for the same reason everyone has a cell phone. The infrastructure we take for granted does not exist.

Traffic in Luanda is amazing. The roads are jammed, with only inches between cars, or between cars and bicycles or for that matter, pedestrians, but without the aggressiveness I would have expected. Drivers allowed others to merge, to cross an intersection, to get into the roundabout.

Our hotel had a rooftop patio, which provided us with a place to sit and relax. We were very close to the beach, overlooking acres of shabby homes and shops.

The first night we went to a nearby hotel for dinner. It was large, clean, with a pool and an elegant restaurant. How easy it was for us to step away from the poverty and the foufou and the tough meat. We must not forget that others do not have our choices.

The highlight of our time in Luanda was the Sunday service at Mario dos Santos’ church, St. Peter’s. It was the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the 25th anniversary of the founding of the church, so it was a big day. Bishop Soares, who served the parish before his consecration, was there in full regalia, with four priests, including Fr. Chip. The service lasted about four hours. Probably a dozen choirs performed, including one from the Evangelical Baptist Church of Angola. People came and went; we have pictures of youngsters peering through windows. As at St. Andrew’s, the offering was a lengthy, joyous dance that included the entire congregation and most of those serving at the altar. At the end of the service, those with birthdays received birthday cake, and the Bishop was presented with a goat.

How was our trip? It was eye-opening, heart-rending, exciting, humbling … awesome.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Operative Plan to Reduce Poverty in Next Quadrennial Announced

from All Africa

Angola Press Agency (Luanda)

The Ministry of Assistance and Social Welfare (MINARS) has an Operative Plan that shall be part of the 2009/2012 quadrennial programme, with a series of activities that make up the country's reality, announced this Thursday here the incumbent minister, João Baptista Kussumua.

The official announced this at a meeting, held at the Palace of Congresses, with the Parliamentary Women's Caucus, led by MP Cesaltina da Conceição Major, which aimed at straightening the cooperation between both institutions.

Minister Kussumua stressed that the plan results from a series of actions and tasks that shall balance socially the efficient mechanism to assist the disadvantaged population.

In this framework, he said, the Welfare Ministry will also, as part of the government, contribute to the reduction of poverty in the country where there are still people who can complain about the aid and the operationalisation of the governance activity, for a full guarantee of citizenship.

Apart from this, he stressed that there are ongoing actions in the sector and that the Operative Plan is part of the Lei 07/04 of October 15, which is the law on social protection.

Angola lashes out at Bob Geldof

from The Times South Africa

LUANDA - Angola’s deputy prime minister has lashed out at Irish rock star turned political activist Bob Geldof over his claims that the southern African nation is run by criminals, state radio reported yesterday.

Aguinaldo Jaime said Geldof’s comments, made at a sustainable development conference held in Lisbon on Tuesday, were "unfortunate and disrespectful."

Geldof, the organiser of the mammoth Live Aid and Live 8 concerts who was knighted for his efforts to fight poverty, told the conference that Angola was a country "run by criminals."

He slammed the oil-rich, yet poverty-stricken southern African nation for building houses in the Bay of Luanda that were more luxurious than those in the exclusive Chelsea and Park Lane neighbourhoods of London.

"He showed total disrespect for Angolan people and the remarks are unfortunate," Jaime told Angolan radio station RNA. "He does not know Angolan reality. He does not know (for instance) that Angola’s government has invested heavily in the construction of affordable social houses."

The deputy prime minister added that the houses Geldof was referring to were built by private companies and that the Angolan government could not be held responsible for the prices.

An official with Imogestin, the real estate company that runs government’s social housing programme told AFP on condition of anonymity that some supposedly affordable houses "go for 180,000 (US Dollars), still out of reach for most Angolans."

Helping advance Angola

fro the Journal Sentinel Online

Consultant builds African client base
By RICK ROMELL

It's one of those things that started with college students talking earnestly over coffee.

They were in Iowa, but their interest was the Third World and how best to help develop it economically. Someday, they said, they'd go into business together and do just that.

That was nearly 20 years ago, but the ocean-spanning friendships those conversations forged explain how a key piece of the development efforts of the African nation of Angola came to be handled from a small suite of offices in the YWCA building on N. King Drive.

Those would be the offices of Pinnacle XL Inc., an eight-employee management consulting firm that, improbably, draws about half its sales from Angola, a country that for decades was crippled by civil war but now is booming on the strength of its oil riches.

"It's really blossomed for us," Pinnacle founder and president KeleMarie Lyons said of the firm's business in Angola, where the economy has grown at double-digit rates each year since 2004. Originally from Dubuque, Lyons, 39, studied at Iowa State University and after graduating came to Milwaukee, eventually became a partner in a marketing firm and, about seven years ago, started Pinnacle.

Coincidentally, the long, bitter war in Angola was nearing its end. When peace came in 2002, one of Lyons' friends from her college days, a native of the country, returned home and became an investment banker.

He got in touch with Lyons and suggested she visit Angola and check out the business opportunities there. Her parents and many friends here had one word for her: Don't.

"They were scared for me," Lyons said. "They think of Angola as a war-torn country . . . but I knew it was something I had to do."

So she did. Before long, Pinnacle was involved in a joint venture halfway around the world, and one deal led to another. Lyons found herself flying into Luanda, Angola's capital, almost every other month.

At first, she expected to be overwhelmed by poverty and misery, but it didn't turn out that way.

"People were very happy and they're very thankful for the opportunities that they have, and even in business they're absolutely thrilled to get new input, new ideas," Lyons said.

Among clients Lyons has worked with in Angola are a food distributor, an airport services firm and one of the country's larger banks, where she helped reorganize the marketing department and created internal systems to monitor ongoing projects.

Most prominent, though, is Pinnacle's work for the National Private Investment Agency, the arm of the government that seeks to foster foreign investment in Angola. Pinnacle and Lyons publish an agency magazine that promotes the country and send out an electronic newsletter on business developments.

Lyons is learning Portuguese, the primary business language in Angola, and has picked up other lessons as well, such as to make sure you have a local partner to help you with cultural and bureaucratic intricacies.

Compared with the United States, she said, business relationships in Angola are much more hierarchical and formal. Titles are always used with names, she said. Because she's a college graduate, she's "Doctora Lyons" or, as she prefers, "Doctora KeleMarie."

"It's kind of the way I imagine the United States was maybe in the '70s or '60s," she said. "Remember, you see in these older movies where there's a man in a big executive office and the secretary's outside (and the boss says,) 'Rose, get me some coffee.' It's a lot like that."

Some things feel familiar, too. Angola has much fertile land, with lots of room for agricultural growth, and among Lyons' clients was a farming operation near the city of Waku Kungo that she visited.

"It felt like home," she said. "It felt like Iowa - miles and miles of cornfields."

Angola faces huge problems. Landmines litter the countryside and have injured or killed more than 400 people since 2004, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Once a major agricultural exporter, the country imports more than half its food and ranks in the lowest 10% of world nations on most socioeconomic measures, according to the U.S. State Department.

Parliament Speaker Calls for Joint Effort Against Poverty

from All Africa

Angola Press Agency (Luanda)

Angolan Parliament speaker, Roberto de Almeida, Monday in Cape Town, South Africa, called on world's politicians and civil society to mobilize efforts and speed up the progress of development, in order to rollback poverty in line with the millennium's goals.

Addressing the plenary session of the 118 Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU)) conference taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, Roberto de Almeida said that another indispensable condition to rollback poverty is the fulfilment of the pact established in 2002, in Monterrey, providing for a new global partnership between the developed and underdeveloped nations.

"This partnership should be centred, mainly, on national development strategies and on the international support of donors, taking into account the extension of the challenge, in which everybody should be accountable, that is to say, requiring the poorest countries to conduct the necessary reforms and demanding assistance from the richest nations towards this effort", stressed the Angolan speaker.

Still, according to him, this responsibility falls, mainly, on politicians, because they have the collective duty of respecting and defending the principles of human dignity, equality and of social cohesion, across the world.

The Angolan speaker also called for the need of progressive remove of the economic, social, cultural and political obstacles that hinder the real equality among citizens, thus contributing to the strengthening of the tools of political, economic and social development in the world.

Since 2000, the Millennium goals have been uniting the international community against poverty and inequalities, with the new century inspiring the world leaders to change words into actions, aiming at reducing famine and diseases by 2015, added the speaker.

Free Rein for Human Traffickers

from All Africa

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

By Mario De Queiroz
Lisbon

There is little awareness on the problem of trafficking in persons, mainly women and children, in Angola, and no laws for cracking down on the growing phenomenon.

Paulino Cunha da Silva, head of cooperation and exchange in the Angolan Interior Ministry, admitted at a workshop held in Luanda Tuesday and Wednesday that the country lacks laws to fight trafficking in human beings.

The workshop was sponsored by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

Cunha da Silva recognised that Angola needs to update its legislation and improve its operational actions to get results in the struggle against trafficking of persons, which affects nearly all African states.

"This workshop has also shown that there is still much to be done in Angola, in comparison with the experience of other countries, some of which are the main sources of the victims of these criminal networks," he said.

According to the Angolan official, combating the traffic in human beings requires the full support of the public, as traffickers resort not only to air, sea and land transport routes, but also to the Internet.

To combat trafficking and reduce the vulnerability of victims, Cunha da Silva said it is essential for states to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, because they are focused on reducing poverty and achieving gender equality, as well as improving access to education, health care and employment.

If the MDGs are met, there would be less of an incentive for many young people who seek a better life in other countries, but whose dreams end up being taken advantage of by the traffickers, he stressed.

According to studies by the U.N. and Interpol (international police), trafficking in persons is the third largest source of income for international organised crime, surpassed only by trafficking in drugs and weapons.

Angola, which was ravaged by 13 years of war for independence against Portugal (1961-1974) and 37 years of civil war (1975-2002), has high proportions of young and extremely poor people in the population, is polarised by social inequality and has vast borders, all of which are contributing factors to the trafficking of persons.

At the workshop it was concluded that, in many cases, women and children trafficked from Angola are taken to neighbouring Namibia, but that in the African continent overall, South Africa is the largest recipient country.

The main strategy agreed at the workshop was the creation of new laws and other legal mechanisms, in the absence of which, as in Angola, human trafficking becomes an easy money-making business.

But Ana Filgueiras, the Portuguese-Brazilian head of the non-governmental organisation "Cidadaos do Mundo" (Citizens of the World) and coordinator of the Network to Combat AIDS in Portuguese-speaking countries (REDE-sida), has a slightly different take.

"Although a state of law is essential, strong-arm measures in themselves cannot guarantee a reduction in crime rates," Filgueiras told IPS.

Her views are based on 18 years of experience in Brazil and 14 in Africa. "Just like the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, what is needed, more than tougher laws, is to listen to the people who are most vulnerable, and together create instruments and information services that arise from and operate within the communities themselves," she said.

"Poverty and the lack of empowerment of women and young people are factors that not only expose them to exploitation, but also to HIV infection, a burden that they will carry even if they manage to escape from their tormentors," she said.

Katharina Schnoring, the IOM representative in Angola, told Portuguese correspondents of Lisbon newspapers in the southwestern African nation that the IOM and the Angolan Interior Ministry are working together on a study on trafficking of persons, the conclusions of which are to be released in six months' time.

There are no precise data about the practice in Angola, but "there is evidence," and if effective mechanisms are created to combat the crime, there will soon be a clearer idea of its magnitude. "Today it is difficult to speak in terms of numbers of victims, because of the very nature of the crime," Schnoring said.

The IOM official emphasised the need to "distinguish between victims of human trafficking and illegal immigrants, because a victim of trafficking has no protection at all."

Filgueiras, however, said that "illegal immigrants, whom we call undocumented, also need protection."

"Undocumented immigrants are also victims of poverty and the lack of proper information. They, too, are exposed to networks that exploit slave labour and force people into prostitution, which usually leads to sexually transmitted diseases, like AIDS," she said.

According to the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, there is evidence that many Angolan children have been taken to Namibia, where boys and sometimes girls become forced labourers. Many girls are enticed to emigrate with false promises of job opportunities, education or even marriage.

In 2006, the IOM launched a campaign in Angola and neighbouring countries to raise awareness among governments and the population in the region of southwest Africa, linked to an aid programme to combat human trafficking in South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In an interview with the Portuguese news agency Lusa, Schnoring said she had information about trafficking of persons from Angola to neighbouring DRC and Namibia.

"This is organised crime, and the IOM intends to collect detailed case descriptions," she said.

Promises of marriage or a good job are the main inducements offered by the traffickers. But in the country of destination, the dream is abruptly shattered. Most of the female victims are sold off to brothels, and the boys and young men are sold into unpaid forced labour.