Opinion
Angola’s lessons from Brazil
“We have an issue of quality, not quantity,” says a senior official in the government who has worked overseas, and who explains that the government is reviewing the national curriculum. “There is a long list of people who have got degrees from private universities in Angola that are not accredited. These were diploma mills. People would pay a few hundred dollars a month, and whether or not they per- formed they would get a degree at the end of a few years,” he explains.
Most of these people end up working in the civil service. The better educated are too precious to the private sector, especially the oil industry. But this is changing, the official claims. The government has set up a training programme with the goal of educating 80,000 professionals, mostly in the applied sciences, within five years.
Lack of capacity at the municipal level is cited as a problem, as well as a reason why decentralisation has stalled. But activists say party hacks and bureaucrats fear losing control. Officials admit that although development is not skewed towards Luanda, decision-making is.
For example, the governor of Benguela Province can propose a project to the environment minister in Luanda. The minister can accept the plan, get it approved in the national budget and then implement it in a different province. Public works and centralised payments are also a problem, the official adds: “What happens when you have a great company doing great work in Moxico Province if they don’t get paid by the central government? There is nothing local government can do about it.”
Companies constrained
Shortcomings in institutional capacity and in physical infrastructure are limiting companies and pushing up their costs, according to João Cândido Fonseca, executive director of Banco Angolano de Investimentos (BAI). He justifies conservative lending policies: “Companies say the banks are too bureaucratic, but we need information and solid, well-run companies to provide financing.”
