Angola’s colonial past has served as a symbolic lodestar for the government’s plans reimagining the future spaces
of the countryside. However, a confluence of historical influences and partisan political aims has weighed heavy
on the plans behind revitalizing the sector to the detriment of agricultural production and rural Angolans alike.
With the agricultural sector as its backdrop, we attempt to expose how the government’s illiberal peacebuilding
model has intentionally used its prolonged ‘socialist’ presence in the rural economy to stunt private economic
initiatives, deprived its peripheral populations of public resources, and only significantly invested in segmented
areas where resource control remained within elite channels of influence. This strategy effectively abandoned large
swathes of rural communities, though the monopoly hold on the power of resource distribution was broken down
with the arrival of Non-State Actors in the countryside.
DW Angola
Development Workshop Angola