Is Travel To Angola Permitted?

I lived in Angola for about three years as a kid, being a child of an oil company employee. It’s really interesting perusal this article as an adult nearly twenty years later. I did actually visit again in the early 2010s, and it was crazy to see how much development had happened in the city as far as infrastructure was concerned. It really was surprising how much it had changed in a short time, but you could still see the massive wealth inequality. So many people live in poverty, and you can’t hide it with a beautiful skyline.

Angola is mentioned prominently in: “The Looting Machine”. Another example of a country whose leaders’ financial success depends solely on resource extraction by multi-nationals rather than the taxation of it’s citizens. This circumstance leads to the needs of the general population being completely irrelevant as their prosperity, or lack thereof, has no impact on the capacity of the corrupt to enrich themselves.

I was the maintenance lead for that 747 that flew to Angola for several years till they stopped flying in 2018. There were 3 times when the flight got to Iah we found a bullet hole on the aircraft. All 3 times the bullet hit the flaps. Local hpd got involved but nothing happened due to it got shot in another country.

This is a very good, brief account of the recent history and development of Angola. I was employed there, by an oil company, based in Luanda, from 1987 to 2000. The tribal influences, Ovimbundu vs Kimbundu, etc, the development of relations between the colonial government and specific groups of nationals, the possibility of migration of communism to the uranium rich Namibia, etc, also had an influence. From my own experience and recollections, the direct flight from Houston was a faster and lesser cost alternative to flying via Paris, Lisbon or Brussels. With most oil company employees and offshore staff being on a 28 day rotational basis, there was a gradual preference for Angolan personnel to replace expatriates, for Luanda office employees to become resident and for facilities to be made available for wives and children. By my recollection, Luanda originally had services; water supply, electricity and sewage disposal, for about 300,000 people. The various phases of the war led to an influx of over 2 million, many living in very basic, breeze block and corrugated iron shacks, surrounding the white walled, red tiled roofs of the colonial city. Water supply for the office and apartment I lived in was brought in by a tanker truck. Power cuts occurred often, at peak usage periods. Some apartment blocks no longer had functioning sewage disposal. Renovation and expansion of the Luanda city services was considered to be a less preferable alternative to building a new city, nearby. The subsequent new construction of large areas of US style housing, villas and apartment blocks, and suitable schooling for International children is not a surprise to me.

i lived in Portugal years ago in my youth in which i worked construction with many Angolan immigrants, and i can tell you these guys were some of the best people i ever met in my life. invited me in their homes for dinner and drinks, always happy and grateful for the opportunity they had to make a better life for themselves and their families

While I was a merchant navy cadet I “visited” Angola, we were pumping gas so far off shore we couldn’t see land. In the end it was destined for China but our ship was chartered by Total, pumping BP owned gas from a Chevron platform. I had a similar experience when acting as a floating oil store off the coast of Nigeria before that. The oil industry just wants to take from Africa with the bare minimum investment back to the countries there

I read an article that proposed that the reason Norway succeeded where others failed (in being a relatively poor country that discovered oil) was that even though Norway was poor when it discovered its oil reserves, its political institutions were strong and were not destroyed by corruption after the discovery of oil. Sadly, it seems that many african countries that discovered oil reserves did not already have strong political institutions in place to deal with the wealth that oil brings and protect themselves from potential corruption.

That last line was a little weird. “If the people can accurately predict which candidate will stick to their word – which candidate will find a path to turn natural wealth into human wealth – then all is not lost for Angola. It still has a chance at breaking the resource curse.” The line implies that one – and only one – of those candidates will absolutely do just that. For all we know, both will. Or more likely, neither will. This feels like the perfect opportunity to point to CGP Grey’s wonderful “Rules for Rulers” article where he elegantly describes the forces that make corruption inevitable. Corruption is simply a tool for acquiring the keys to power, something a ruler needs no matter how honorable their intentions. If Angola’s government is going to reform to better serve its people, that will almost certainly be because external players who benefit from it doing so have become more important keys to power. A well-intentioned leader is important, but destined to fail unless those keys to power change to help align his goals with his power base. The fact that this election is happening at all is a good sign, though.

Is there any way you could make a similar article about sao paulo? The sheer amount of inequality that is present in that city is unprecedented. You could go from luxury and opulence above most European capitals to poverty and violence comparable to war zones in the blink of an eye. I think it would make a very interesting article, either about rio de janeiro or sao paulo.

Zaire smuggling weapons into UNITA was possibly the cause of the worst African Air disaster in history. In 1996, an overloaded AN-32 took off from Kinshasa’s N’dolo airport but crashed into a market place, killing at least 370 people and injuring hundreds more. President Mobutu orchestrated the weapons smuggling at the time.

It looks a lot nicer than when I was there in the 80s. It was a bit of a hole then, still with a slow war going on in the south. Little food available and infrastructure so poor that oil workers would not use the lift in their tower block a week before leave, in case it broke down and trapped them. Luanda looked like it had been a nice place once, but was full of Cubans and Russians as well as the American oil companies. There were some interesting events with the Russian “trawlers” hanging around just offshore an American oil base and retransmitting all of the American walky talky traffic back over loud speakers to wind them up. On another occasion luanda Airport was closed for the departure of the Portuguese prime minister, so our helicopter could not depart. So the crew of a Russian airforce executive jet came over and started chatting to the French pilot who showed them around. They reciprocated by showing us around the inside of their aircraft.. Not bad for still being in the middle of the cold War!!

Very good stuff, once more. Thank you. As for the image chops and jumps: when working with interlaced images with differing framrates: convert interlaced- to progressive footage in the framrate it was recorded in, do it in a separate project (make sure field order and fps are as in the original or at least visually make sense when importing). Then, import into your project; making sure the original frame rate remains assigned, so conversion happens in your final compilation sequence. Only the occasional single frame stop or drop will remain, being hardly if at all visible.

Angola’s historical population. 1990 – 12 million. 2000 – 16 million. 2010 – 23 million. 2020 – 33 million. Future Estimates. 2030 – 45 million. 2050 – 77 million. 2100 – 188 million. When the poorest decide to have a revolution I wouldn’t want to be in Luanda especially after years of showing off all that wealth.

The idea was to convince the portuguese angolans to stay, their businesses were important for the new government. However the start of the civil war proved that was impossible. My grandfather had a few bakeries, as a baker he was an asset. Decided to stay but was quickly turned into a hostage controlled for months by the MPLA until in a james bond like escape attempt he returned to Portugal. My familly all came from Angola. The Civil War and after the Dos Santos dinasty destroyed any hope for a future.

South African cities like Durban, Joburg, Cape Town and Pretoria are cheap to live in, yet have more money, better infrastructure, more to do and most importantly are actually built by South African companies, these buildings in Luanda are built by Chinese companies . All to create the illusion of wealth when its actually not there

It’s actually quite curious how the greed of other nations resulted in so much suffering. The 1974 people’s revolution in Portugal resulted in Portugal giving freedom to the colonies and, unfortunately, other greedy nations quickly jumped into supporting their factions to create another dictatorship. Poor people of Angola.

I have been to Luanda, I have visited some of these places, streets in 2018. This country has huge potential, lots of young people available for work. They have wide access to ocean as a cheap transport and yet they can’t properly export their domestic produce because of the underdeveloped roads infrastructure, ports. The country suffers from insane levels of corruption. The “quick gain” mentality of the people who make their way to the top crippled the country’s economy. The economy has never been diversified. The capital city doesn’t have clean water. Even the hotel “Diamante” where we stayed didn’t have clean tap water, we were afraid to take shower also because, the water was obviously right from the tropical rivers, uncleaned, untreated, it smelled. When I spoke to residents they confirmed that some buildings had clean water while most didn’t. That was in the capital. Look at Dubai, Abu Dhabi – the UAE. They don’t have any sources to get underground water or whatsoever and yet, they invested their oil money to put enough desalination plants to provide the entire cities with crisp clean, top quality drinking water for homes and even the farms. In the middle of the desert they are able to grow high quality vegetables and even some fruits. The guy who invited us to Angola was another wealthy guy who was also corrupt. He wasn’t shy to show us what he got through forged tenders and bidding. He had around 50 different businesses majority of which were non-functional, only few of them were operating the rest were there for show off.

The damage that the colonists have left in their wake on these African countries is still being felt and will be for decades. Their influence has still maintained a stranglehold long after they have abandoned their scorched lands. These people have been pawns of more powerful nations and business magnates profiting off their resources.

I did this run as a Maintenance Representative for World Airways around the turn of the century and I believe your information may be incorrect. The passengers were oil workers from rough necks to execs. No confusion, SONAIR. We were chartered ACMI, they lease the Aircraft with Crew, Maintenance and Insurance payed by World Airways. At the time this cost would have been 4-5k/hr. X14 hrs that would be about 60k, their other significant expense is fuel. About another 70k USD. ATLAS whom you referenced is an ACMI operator as well. We we’re operating an MD11, a 747-400 gets much more expensive to operate.

interesting article. it really shows how the individual governments that freed multiple african countries from the grip of colonialism have failed to do their job and are actually siphoning africa’s wealth to developed countries. the african people continue to not benefit, while these leaders grow reacher and richer along with their kids, family, and friends to support their lavish lives. what is happening in Angola, is happening in many other countries, and it’s really sad to see that the very people who were meant to protect us only reached for power with the wrong intentions. and unfortunately the democracy in Africa is a mirage. these parties that freed the african people from colonialism have clung to power and created a system that protects them from ever being taken down. we have the right of suffrage, but our choice doesn’t really matter, for the same people will remain in power no matter what. it is almost like a second wave of colonialism in the end of the day

As an Angolan who’s been perusal a learning a lot from this website, I appreciate this article and say that unfortunately, the 24th of August elections are again proving that MPLA is not ready to give up their control and corruption. We wish for a country that creates an environment for everyone to thrive not only politicians and those who are attached to that corrupt party. Despite some efforts, we do not believe they will manage to heal the same illness they created and keep infecting themselves every day.

Nice to see that Angola came out of the civil war and become a successful oil exporting country. Everywhere in the world, the rich get rich at the expense of the poor and the country. It is the same way in China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, the USA, and France. It just varies in degree and sophistication.

I’ve been perusal ur articles for ages now never thought you’d talk about my country’s capital great article as always but saying 2000 dollars is a year and half of the average angolan salary is not quite accurate normally you’d need 5 years with the amount normal people make here of course if you make part of the elite(thieves) then that’s not even pocket money these people are filthy rich …I am a college educated male can’t land a job just ’cause my family doesn’t have ties with government members…the saddest part is I am not the only one there’s many brilliant young people both man and women highly educated very smart that can’t land jobs just wanna Get help to overthrow these thieves JLO included… I love America and Europe but don’t want to become an immigrant. If anyone would help but damn you can’t really help for someone to solve ur problems I guess just hope I don’t die before seeing Africa free of tyrants… sorry For any typos English is my fourth language

Democracy alone will not save Angola, sadly. Until Angola matures beyond a resource extraction economy into one where individual worker’s labor are valued higher, the standards of living will not appreciably increase. It has been when more complex economies require more complex labor that the keys of power allow for widespread education and improvements to the standard of living, so as to develop a new resource to extract, that of the labor capital of the country. This is how capitalism works fundamentally, when all social relations are turned over to profit generation, the only way for average people to gain relative wealth is through investment in them with the expectation of a future return as skilled labor assets. However, with globalization, automation and other harbingers of late stage capitalism; the market for skilled labor is low and plummeting ever further. Thus we see a worldwide backslide of democracies descending into resource driven dictatorships, as the value of nations is increasingly found in it’s land and not the people utilizing that land. Until people break this cycle of profit extraction, democracy will just allow for the illusion of choice between tyrants with the same goal of resource domination and perpetuating income inequality.

I’ve flown on that plane. It is NOT luxurious. One flight had to land 3x to pull unruly drunk Angolans off the plane, on Angolan independence day. Angolan government-connected people can take your reserved ticket at any point without warning. The entertainment system was 10+ years old. The plane randomly dropped 10k feet without warning, or ever being explained.

Very well made little documentary. First time I watch something so accurate made in English! Although the research made on the decolonization could’ve been more profund because the true cause behind the liberation movements started on the International level, by supporting independentist movements. The Claws of Washington and Moscow were very deep on this 40+ years of misery, not only in Angola, but also in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. All perfectly assimilated countries at the time of their rushed independence, backed by communism money and deals with corrupt Portuguese politicians. This subject goes so much deeper than this. Anyhow great article. 👌🏼

You have to actually be joking with that ending. The reason Angola, like many of the other countries you mentioned are “cursed” is literally outlined in the beginning of this exact same article. Idk about other Africans but I’m fucking tired of Western commentary pretending that there’s some unknown and nebulous internal reason that countries like Angola are the way they are An extra decade and a half of violent colonial war, which the international community did nothing about despite grand claims about ending colonialism, followed by three decades of proxy war (which the international community directly supported) are already a shaky foundation on which to build a state. Couple that with profiteers, forced “liberalisation”, and the looming threat of invasion or assassination if politicians actually do the right thing and of course you’ll see inequality. Like idk how you can be confused about the lack of education or the centralisation of wealth when officials that promote education are invariably assassinated and the wealth their replacements hold is built on Western cash held in Western banks Even if Angola is fortunate enough to end up with a good government after this election, the day they say no too strongly to shell is the day America or France starts planning for a new government

The issue with Angola and other African nations is this; when they became independent, the people who fought and asked for independence from the Europeans sold the countries down the river. They did back door deals during negations such as French speaking countries selling their currency to France, keeping European language as official languages, and these leaders joined the elite masonry clubs that Europeans, Americans and Asians belong to, even Nelson Mandela he did the same thing. Thus meaning the interests and benefits of their club members who are leaders in corporate companies and euro-asiatic and American companies came FIRST before AFRICANS. Since then until now, it’s an old boys network type of governance. There’s no attempt to improve things, it’s simply about pretence and pretending to appear to be doing something, appearing to oppose the Europeans or Americans but behind closed doors the business deals keep rolling in, African politicians buying real estates and building business home and abroad. The solution is simple. Stronger institutions are needed in Africa, strong men mentality must be secondary and national citizens committee with tribal representatives chosen at local level by locals who most barely speak Portuguese, French, English or Spanish to choose their own leaders. These committees to oversee the government, to review, accept or reject and rubber stamp their decisions. Parliamentary formatting isn’t a suitable form of governance for Africa. In the meantime education,health, and access to opportunities, finance and universal income to be introduced of $1000 a month.

Rewatching this one it strikes me again how the Dos Santos family and many of the other top politicians have Portuguese last names, and many of the signs shown are in Portuguese as well. It is deeply interesting to me how each former colony engages with the history and culture of the countries that plundered them for decades and centuries. I hope Angola’s future is bright for its everyday people, not just its elites.

Interesting history of Angola, but I’m puzzled by your references to the “resource curse.” As I understand it, the “resource curse” (aka “Dutch disease) has nothing to do with corruption. It simply means that the efforts of a developing country to build up a strong manufacturing sector is undermined by the strong revenues from the sales of its commodities and natural resources. These revenues strengthen the local currency, making it more valuable, and thus making the manufactured products more expensive in export markets. So, the country will not be able to price its manufactured exports competitively, and will thus lose out in those markets.

I was waiting for you to mention Equatorial Guinea. Based off what I read in the book The Secret World of Oil – which I recommend – I’d say it’s even worse there. At least Angola’s standard of living went up a fraction after the oil boom. In Equatorial Guinea it went significantly down. The only things that went up were the dictator’s bank balance, police brutality, and the country’s environment (in smoke.) And of course, the resource curse is still a curse even if pure peace and democracy take-over in the country – seeing as how the resource in question is something that has to STAY in the ground to stop Climate Change…

Great article. However, Angola is in Southern Africa. Southern Africa comprises of Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, among others. That said, in 2015 I wrote some business case studies on developing nations. Using the Big Mac price index for measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) to determine the cost of living in different countries. Luanda was the most expensive city in the world to live.

Not even one minute into the article, and already knowing a little about Angola (esp oil, and the late 20th century bush war), it seems Angola’s struck by the “curse of resource greatness”, combined with being a latecomer to independence, let alone anything even arguably a democracy. A valuable commodity like oil being just, well, there . Just providing easy money for lots of people without the leaders needing to put money into human development for the masses. Yes, Norway has lots of oil too, but it was fortunate to have already been an economically advanced and educated nation with an already strong tradition of investing heavily in human development for the masses; including an already-there very strong culture of democracy before the 1970s exploitation of its own offshore reserves. That more or less forced the government to make sure the oil revenues went to fund the people’s interests, and so greatly reduced corruption in that country. There is hope for Angola, if only the powerful can look to Norway AND aspire for more for Angola than being their glorified ATM machine.

Unfathomable to me how people could be so blind to an OBVIOUS wealth gap that they would willingly go to a yacht club right at the center of a neighborhood of run down shacks. It’s like all awareness of anything outside themselves has been lost. I couldn’t imagine going to a place like that and somehow having a good time, I feel like I would be guilty and undeserving the entire time. Though, even if this seems almost unbelievable, it’s not so far off from how people don’t give beyond a passing glance to the homeless, at least in its essence which is likely about ease. It’s easier to ignore the hardships of the people around you and just continue having a good time. Nobody’s immune to the possibility that they’d look away from things like this, all it takes is the right circumstances.

Okay weird thought here but hear me out. You know people shit on Avatar (the 2009 film, not the show) for basically being Pocahontas in space? That it’s just the same old white man shows up, meets native girl, turns in greedy white man story? Ive always really liked it and it’s always felt a bit different to me and I think, weirdly, the gated communities in Angola sort of illustrate why. The group of wealthy people living in luxury behind tall walls and armed guards, digging up and shipping home untold riches from the ground, secluded in their fortress while the actual native people of the land struggle on around them ideally without ever seeing the real people is kinda more the vibe I got than colonisers or conquerors invading. This type of arrangement is more an occupation, it’s permanent and entrenched

While I applaud the effort to educate people by exposing history and current events that we may not necessarily have known, reports like this are woefully lacking due to the dearth of citizens’ lived experiences. Anyone can find figures and create clever graphs, but “what is/was it like to live through that?” provides the audience with a far better understanding of the goings-on. Nevertheless, this report was quite informative and gave good context. But the lack of qualitative inquiry makes it incredibly one-sided.

It never surprises me that places like this have a starving population no running water in certain parts poverty through the roof but somehow manage to keep a civil war going for years and years..Last time I checked guns and ammo cost money as well as soldiers and other equipment…I’m no expert on global economics or governments it’s just my observation