The leader of UNITA, Angola’s largest opposition party, stated today in Luanda that Angola does not need more promises of diversification, but rather an economy that is “sufficiently free to finally diversify itself.”
Adalberto Costa Júnior delivered a national address on the political, economic, and social situation of Angola, emphasizing that Angolans need “a state sufficiently disciplined to finally unleash the productive potential of society.”
According to Adalberto Costa Júnior, Angola did not waste decades due to a lack of resources, but because it organized its resources, budget, currency, and institutional apparatus within a model that centralized decisions, protected rents, delayed reforms, and transformed abundant resources into dependency.
“The country possesses abundant natural resources, a strategic location, and a young population. Yet, it remains vulnerable, poorly diversified, under severe fiscal compression, with weak financial depth, and excessively dependent on a single source of foreign exchange: oil,” highlighted Adalberto Costa Júnior.
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For the leader of Angola’s second-largest political party, the country’s problem is not limited to the volatility of crude oil prices, external shocks, or the insufficiency of public programs.
The politician argued that “what has been consistently lacking is an economic environment in which producing becomes more rational than capturing rents, investing safer than waiting for protection, formalizing more advantageous than remaining on the sidelines, and diversifying more profitable than remaining dependent on oil and the state.”
In his extensive speech, the UNITA president stressed that the central point of his diagnosis “is not just how much Angola collects, exports, owes, or grows,” but rather what kind of economic model these figures reveal.
Adalberto Costa Júnior also stated that the concentration of power in the President of the Republic “allows for the political capture of justice,” further listing corruption, the low quality of education and healthcare, poverty, inequality, and a lack of opportunities as major hurdles for the country.
