Projects in hand to boost coffee output
PROVINCE OF KWANZA NORTE Support for the province’s farming community, health and education, and schemes to help refugees return to their homelands

gricultural development is viewed as the key to the social and economic rehabilitation of the province of Kwanza Norte in northern central Angola.
In the days when Angola ranked among the world’s leading exporters of coffee, Kwanza Norte was one of the leading producers in the country. This is a sector that governor Manuel Pedro Pacavira hopes to revive,
but he also wants to get away from the days when the province’s economy virtually consisted of a coffee monoculture.
Other agricultural products grown in the province include rice, bananas, sugar cane, beans and cassava, along with cash crops such as cotton, palm oil and sunflowers.
“Although the recovery of our coffee production is a priority, we have to look at other products as well,” says Mr Pacavira. “The population has to eat and this means we have to cultivate things like corn and potatoes.”
But diversification does not mean abandoning coffee. “Our agricultural potential is fundamentally based on coffee production,” he says.

Pacavira: effort

Colonial era
“We used to produce a lot in the past, during colonial times,” he adds, in a reference to the era of Portuguese colonial rule which ended in 1975. The civil war that followed independence severely affected the province.
“During the war the population left the fields, and the haciendas [coffee farms] were almost abandoned and left behind,” says Mr Pacavira. “Now we are making a big effort to rehabilitate the haciendas, which could be the source of the revenue the province needs.”
He emphasizes that this is a target for the medium term, rather than for short-term gain. “Although we have resumed coffee production, it will take some time before the whole province can live off coffee again.”
Kwanza Norte, located directly to the east of the Angolan capital, Luanda, is the smallest province in Angola at just over 24,000 sq km, but it has to support a population estimated at 400,000 – and, on top of that, an inundation of refugees from the civil war.
The war has not gone away entirely. The province found itself in the headlines when rebel forces attacked a train with land mines in August, killing at least 250 people and injuring hundreds more.
Mr Pacavira says at least 180,000 people have fled from the violence to Kwanza Norte, and most have ended up in the larger towns where they believed they would be safer.
The provincial government has introduced two policies in response
to the challenges posed by the influx of refugees. “The first one is an emergency program to meet the immediate needs of the people
such as food, working tools and seeds,” says Mr Pacavira.
Enabling people to return to farming gives them their own resources in addition to the
assistance they might receive from non-governmental organizations and humanitarian aid, he adds.
The second program is intended to help the refugees return to their original homelands. “In spite of the food and medical aid, the people who left their land in order to find safety always want to go back as soon as they know that conditions are safe again.”
The problem is that when they return home they find their property has been damaged or destroyed, and this is where the second program plays a part in helping them to restart their lives. The authorities supply them with construction materials so that they can rebuild their houses.
At the same time, the government is focusing on health and education. This has involved rebuilding hospitals and schools, and introducing programs to combat diseases such as sleeping sickness and tuberculosis in partnership with several foreign, non-governmental organizations.
The long-term objective is, of course, economic development. One significant step has been the construction of the Cambamde dam, which powers an industrial park at Dondo as well as small and medium-sized firms in the provincial capital, N’Dalantado.

Capital investment
Nurturing development will require capital investment. “We are coming out of a very difficult period of the war in Angola, and all the work in rebuilding the country has to be done now,” the governor says.
He adds that it would be in investors’ own interests to act now rather than later. “I always say that if you want to make the big money you have to invest now when everything is cheap and all the opportunities are right there. In a few years’ time, there will still be opportunities but it won’t be the same. We are open to talk to any investors,” he says.