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ANGOLA: Oil-Driven Boom Set to Take on Nuclear Flavour

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, May 15 2007 (IPS) - Like the phoenix, Angola – sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest oil producer after Nigeria – has risen from the ashes of decades of armed conflict, and analysts are talking about its potential to one day become an economic, political and military powerhouse in Africa.

The 1961-1974 war of independence from Portugal and the 1975-2002 civil war wrought devastation on the southwest African country of 16 million, leaving a death toll of over one million and nearly four million displaced from their homes.

But Angola is now enjoying an economic boom driven by oil exports. The economy grew 15 percent in 2006, and that figure is actually expected to double this year.

Angola is presently the largest supplier of crude oil to China and the seventh largest supplier to the United States. About 1.4 million barrels of oil are produced daily, a total that is projected to rise to two million this year.

The next few steps aimed at building a position as a regional leader will be taken in the direction of developing a nuclear power industry, for which Angola will reportedly have the support of China, according to recent remarks to the press by Angolan Minister of Science and Technology João Baptista Ngandajina.

Although Angola is one of the world’s top oil exporters, “it has limitations in terms of energy production, so why not start thinking about projects that in the future could produce energy from nuclear sources?” asked Ngandajina. But he emphatically clarified that the strategy will not include the development of nuclear weapons.

Parliamentary approval of a bill on nuclear energy that is in the drafting stage will allow the country to begin moving in the direction of producing nuclear power.

The government of President José Eduardo dos Santos has explained that top priority will initially be given to research projects and the training of personnel. The bill, according to Ngandajina, “will define all aspects of the acquisition, transmission, use and storage of nuclear equipment” in Angola.

The minister said deposits of uranium have been discovered in the country, although he declined to say in which regions they were found.

Nuclear energy expert António Costa e Silva told the Portuguese on-line weekly Expresso on May 8 that Angola’s abundant uranium deposits have caught the interest of China, which will attempt to offer in exchange “training of personnel and the construction of one or two nuclear plants” in Angola.

But Costa e Silva, a professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, said he was sceptical regarding Angola’s capacity to develop a nuclear power industry, given the need for advanced technologies.

He said moving towards production of nuclear power would be difficult for a country like Angola, whose economy is based on commodity exports, and argued that the country “would earn more by exporting uranium than by developing a nuclear policy within its own borders.”

“Angola in the nuclear club?” wondered Angolan political scientist Eugénio Costa Almeida in an interview with IPS.

Costa Almeida, who lives in Portugal and has a doctoral degree from the Universidade Técnica of Lisbon (UTL), is one of the leading voices on Africa in the Portuguese and international press. He said Angola is poised to become a regional power in the not so distant future.

“For now, political and military factors have a heavier weight than economic factors,” he said. But combined, these three aspects “will make Angola a regional powerhouse,” he predicted.

He cited “the strong political influence of José Eduardo dos Santos, joined together with a strong military machine that was able to place, maintain and consolidate in power the leaders of the two Congos.”

The analyst pointed out that in the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso “was ‘defeated’ in the polls in 1997 and only returned to power in 1999 through his private militia, the Cobras, who defeated the Zulus (Cocoye militia), the virtually private army of president-elect Pascal Lissouba, with the aid of the armed forces of Angola, according to press reports.”

He also noted that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, “political, military and economic support from Angola enabled (President Joseph) Kabila to take power in Kinshasa” in 2001, a move that was not ratified by elections until 2006.

In Sao Tomé and Príncipe, a small former Portuguese colony off the coast of West Africa, Angola’s power “is most visible with respect to the economy, although its political influence is not as dormant as some would have us believe,” said Costa Almeida.

He quoted the president of the small Atlantic Ocean island nation, Fradique de Menezes, who upon taking office in 2001 “clearly and incisively” accused Angola of meddling in the election campaign, and recalled that it was the Angolan government that aborted a coup d’etat in 2003 led by army Major Fernando Pereira.

In the region, “Angola’s strong rival is South Africa which, every time it feels that Angola is starting to take on a high profile role, names its leading political figure, Nelson Mandela, as a negotiator in the various conflicts, even when the conflicts are outside of its zone of influence and effective intervention, which is southern Africa,” said the expert in international relations.

Asked by IPS whether China’s growing presence in Angola could have an influence on the interests of other countries that have a strong influence there, like Portugal and Brazil, Costa Almeida said “not necessarily, nor do I think that would happen,” because Beijing “has a broad view of its relations” and never tries to distance potential competitors.

“China is like a bottomless pit when it comes to the search for and absorption of knowledge and know-how to reinforce its strong position in the current international system,” and Angola, “which is keen on consolidating its regional leadership capacity and independence of movement, does not rule out aid and assistance, regardless of where it comes from, as long as it does not clash with its interests,” he said.

The analyst, who stressed that friendship only exists among people, said “countries do not have friends, but interests to defend,” which is why Angola wants to maintain “good relations with Portugal and Brazil.”

He criticised the “complex” that emerged in the last years of Portugal’s empire in Africa, “especially among the Portuguese left, which persists in thinking that political, economic and/or military cooperation amounts to neo-colonialism.”

With regard to Brazil, the South American giant is valued in Angola “as an important economic partner which also offers the advantage of sharing the same language and a similar culture, and which is only separated from Angola by the Atlantic,” he said.

Relations between Angola and its two main Portuguese-speaking associates, Portugal and Brazil, “are very important to China, which not only does not try to undermine those ties, but in fact encourages them,” he maintained.

But Costa Almeida also said that to become an effective regional powerhouse, Angola still has a long path to tread towards true democracy and peace, “while overcoming the last obstacles in the way of achieving that: corruption” and the subservience of the media.