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Manager António Costa Silva said today that Angola fell into a “trap” and, of the billions of oil revenues, “there was nothing left for Angolans,” 45 years after independence.
For António Costa Silva, the centralization of power, which the war forced, combined with “a boom in oil revenues” just after the end of the conflict, led the country, led by José Eduardo dos Santos, “to misgovernment, embezzlement of funds, diversion of income, corruption systems, which are absolutely perverse and distort the functioning of the economy ”.
When the war in Angola ended in 2002, it was in the “full boom of oil prices, so the country received absolutely extraordinary financial income, and here we have the combination of two factors that still led to a greater centralization of power”, explained. the manager, who worked in the Angolan state oil company Sonangol and was linked to the country’s struggle for independence.
Now, “when there is easy money from oil, especially when decisions are centralized in a single person, it is much more difficult for the country to reform itself, diversify the economy and bet on sectors other than oil.”
Angola “got caught up” in this cycle that, “combined with the bad government, created a great poverty trap for the country as a whole”.
Botswana, which also obtained very important income from diamonds, on the contrary, used this financial income to develop education, health, innovation, technology and diversify the economy, Costa Silva exemplified.
“And today there is a country that is much more prosperous and more resistant than Angola,” said the coach.
In Angola, oil revenues, 45 years after independence, “left nothing for Angolans,” he admitted, referring to the fact that the studies of several Angolan economists are “conclusive about the destination of these billions and billions of dollars, which they were used out of personal greed. ” and not for the benefit of the country ”.
The country, on the contrary, “suffered a lot during this process,” he stressed.
In order for the also president of Partex, an oil company that belonged to the Gulbenkian Foundation and now controlled by the Thai PTTEP, to get out of the trap the country is in now, he needs to “bet on Agriculture, because this, even if it is a good basic food, and then education and health ”.
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