Half of the population lives with less than $ 1.9 per day, while Angola, rich in diamonds, is also the second country producer of the continent.
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Joao Claudio was born in 1975, the year when Angola became independent and the popular Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA) came to power. At 47, he therefore only knew one party at the head of this Lusophone country in southern Africa, no alternation. So like thousands of other voters from Luanda, the capital, he voted for the National Union for the total independence of Angola (Unita), the opposition, Wednesday August 24 in the morning.
“I live in a country where there are no schools, no drinking water, no hospitals, no justice, he deplores. And yet, Angola is rich, Very rich even. Now I want it to change. “On his ballot, this change has a name: Adalberto Costa Junior.
Born in 1962 in Chinjenje, 700 km south of Luanda, the Unita candidate is a pure product of this party which he joined in adolescence in 1975. Five years later, he s ‘Exile in Portugal where he mobilizes the diaspora, then to the Vatican. He won an electrical engineering diploma and, after the civil war which opposed his party for twenty-seven years to the MPLA, Adalberto Costa Junior returned to Angola. It will take fifteen years to this charismatic speaker to climb all the levels, spokespersons to President of Unita.
Faced with him, the outgoing president, Joao Lourenço, is seeking a second term. At 68, this former artillery general formed in the USSR remains the favorite of polls, even if his party is losing momentum. Angola, the second petroleum producer of the continent (1.1 million barrels per day) and rich in diamonds, remains extremely poor: more than half of the population lives with less than $ 1.9 per day, according to the World Bank.
“New wind”
Joao Lourenço, who succeeded José Eduardo Dos Santos, whose clan and family are accused of having looted the riches of Angola for almost forty years, promised to increase the minimum wage and that of civil servants. But he must forget the economic crisis that followed the collapse of crude prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation around 21.4 % in July and a drought that weighs on farmers. Not to mention the image of an aging party that sticks to the mpla.
During his campaign, Adalberto Costa Junior, 60, did not fail to play on this weakness of the opponent. He has attracted a city and connected to social networks which has often not known war. “Adalberto blows a new wind on Unita, estimates Daniel Ribant, author of Força Angola (L’Harmattan). As a good strategist, he managed to trace his way among the old guard and to oppose a” quiet force “to the MPLA provocations as to those of his own camp. “
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