China and Angola

Capital suggestion

Angola: officially the Republic of Angola, this is a southern African country with a population of 24.3 million and an area of 481,354 sq miles (40 percent bigger than Pakistan’s area). Angola is the third largest producer of diamonds in Africa and the eight largest exporter of crude oil in the world.

President: Jose Eduardo dos Santos has been Angola’s president since 1979. He is also the commander-in-chief of the Angolan Armed Forces and the president of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

Children: President Santos and First Lady Ana Paula Santos have a daughter, Isabel dos Santos.

China-Angola: Angola is the largest recipient of Chinese investment in the continent. China is Angola’s largest export as well as import partner. The Export-Import Bank of China has already extended financing of more than $13 billion. The China Development Bank has provided $2 billion to Sonangol, Angola’s national oil company. Over the past 14 years, China has lent around $20 billion.

China-Angola oil trade: Angola is the world’s largest supplier of crude oil to China (the largest being Saudi Arabia).

Characteristics of Chinese investments in Angola: Chinese companies are guaranteed an extraordinarily high rate of returns with financing terms that are opaque, non-transparent and vague. There’s often no clear-cut distinction between a loan, project financing, foreign direct investment and a concessional loan.

The Chinese business model: The Chinese prefer single-company bids and resent all forms of competition-based public procurement rules. The Chinese business model ignores all issues related to good governance and conflict of interest.

Richest lady in Africa: According to Forbes, the renowned business magazine, Isabel dos Santos is now the “richest woman not only in Angola but the whole of Africa…making her Africa’s first billionaire woman”.

Inequality in Angola: According to The Economist, Angola is “one of the world’s most unequal countries. Most of the benefits of the resource boom have gone to a fairly small elite that lives in an African version of St Tropez, with ritzy beach clubs inside walled enclaves. Only 9 percent of the population has running water and the country has one of the world’s highest rates of infant mortality, and the only known cases of urban polio.”

Corruption tour: Rafael Marques, an award-winning Angolan journalist who reports on conflict diamonds and government corruption, takes visitors on a ‘corruption tour’ of the capital “pointing out which presidential crony or cousin owns this building or that bank.”

Parasites: According to the Rand Daily Mail, “There are parasites of all kinds in poor countries. One variety is intestinal, the worms that afflict countless children. In a hospital here in Angola, nurses pointed to a little girl named Marcelina, who they said was at risk of dying from anaemia caused by worms and malnutrition. She had so many worms she was spitting them up. The other kind of parasite afflicting Angolan children is the crooked official, often working with Western executives. It’s not a coincidence that Angola is a centre for both kinds of parasites.”

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com Twitter: @saleemfarrukh