The African Development Bank (AfDB) will provide $160mn to help Angola plug budget holes over the next year, with a second tranche scheduled for 2025, the multilateral institution said in a statement on Friday.
- The decision was made during a meeting between AfDB head Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and Angola’s President João Manuel Lourenço on Friday 20th September in Luanda.
- The budget support will go into economic reforms which “include diversifying away from oil, promoting private sector, tackling the country’s debt burden, reduce poverty, achieving food and energy security, and creating youth employment.”
- Angola adds about 550,000 new workers annually, and more than 40% of its 35 million youth are unemployed.
“Angola has no business spending $2 billion per annum importing food. It should and can be totally self-sufficient and even become a net exporter,” Dr. Adesina said, referring to the reforms to make the country food sufficient.
“Angola is sitting on a gold mine of clean hydro energy,” he added, “you have 1.5GW of unused clean hydro energy and by 2027 you will have 3.5GW. With investment from the private sector, the country can provide power solution to Zambia, Namibia and South Africa.”
Angola is working to attract significant private sector investment and will present projects worth nearly $2 billion at this year’s Africa Investment Forum, to be held in Morocco’s city of Rabat from 4 to 6 December.
The development comes days after Washington confirmed that outgoing US President Joe Biden will make his first and last visit to Africa, to Angola, in mid-October.
