Sequencing, intensity and duration of economic transformation in Angola

Angola has a considerable natural resource base - extensive reserves of petroleum, diamonds and other minerals - a good climate and fertile soils, and yet has failed to profit from its economic potential. Social standards and living conditions are well below Sub-Saharan African averages: in 1992, life expectancy was estimated at 44 years, infant mortality at 30 per cent, adult literacy at 41 per cent, and less than 25 per cent of the population had access to safe water. In the last 15 years of Portuguese colonial rule (between 1960 and 1974), although the economy was structured to serve the interests of the metropole, Angola achieved an average annual real growth rate of eight per cent. The subjugation by Portugal of the indigenous peoples of Angolan was effected first by conquest, and thereafter by settlement of metropolitan Portuguese on lands taken, in many cases, from tribal ownership. The indigenous peasantry of Angola was, therefore, dispossessed ) and forced into contract labour, either as farm workers or unskilled industrial labourers, under harsh conditions. Portugal's own shortage of capital precluded the possibility of effective economic exploitation of Angola through investment, resulting in key agricultural and mining ventures passing into ownership of British American, German and Japanese corporations (Makidi 1983).