Connecting the isolated communities
State-owned Angola Telecom is modernizing the system – a difficult job with 80 percent of the network destroyed by war

ith barely two telephones for every 100 people, Angolan telecommunications minister Licinio Tavares Ribeiro is not looking for an overnight miracle as the system is gradually put back together again.
The telecoms network was destroyed in the civil war and in some cases had to be rebuilt from scratch. “We had to go back to zero, and we are creating new structures and expanding services,” he says.
The minister draws a parallel between the state of the telecoms system and the country as a whole. “Angola has great potential, but it also suffers from a high level of destruction,” he says. “Our potential will produce results, not in the short term but in the medium term.”

De Matos: potential

Realism is the keynote of his policy. “To reconstruct our country we have to give priority to some areas because we cannot do everything at once,” says Mr Ribeiro. “The government is aware of these problems and is making a lot of effort to give priority to the industry because the future development of the country depends a lot on telecommunications.”
Even as it repairs or replaces existing equipment, state-owned Angola Telecom has been converting the network to modern technology.
“In the interior of the country, 80 percent of the infrastructure installed between 1980 and 1985
was destroyed by war, which also obstructed our access to these areas,” says Angola Telecom managing director Jose Gualberto de Matos.

“We had to replace the destroyed terrestrial telephone network with satellite telecommunication systems.”
Starting in the capital, Luanda, and the oil-rich northern province of Cabinda, Angola Telecom has introduced mobile telephony. This is a rapidly growing sector of the market in a country estimated to have less than 100,000 functioning land lines.
Running a telephone system in the interior of a country as large and as isolated as Angola, where most economic activity is concentrated around the capital and the northern oil province of Cabinda, is an expensive business.

“The telecommunications systems in the majority of the provinces are not profitable, and to cope with this we think there should be a subsidy to help us operate in these regions,” says Mr de Matos.
In addition, some provinces do not have an electricity supply, making it near impossible to operate telephone systems. And, then, of course, everything hinges on Angola establishing a durable peace after a quarter of a century of civil war.
“We have rural telecoms programs for most of the provinces, which are ready to be implemented as soon
as there is peace in Angola,” says Mr de Matos. “And as soon as that happens we will immediately go to work on those projects.”