Angola’s Kibbutz. On the broad verdant plain of Wako Kungo, there is what looks like a tidy oasis, so different from the vast semi-arid zones crossed when flying in from the capital 400km to the north. This is Aldeia Nova (new village), the most ambitious agro-industrial project in Angola. The 600 families who work there, on a kibbutz model, are those of Unita ex-fighters and of the national army, as
Angola’s Kibbutz.
by Augusta Conchiglia Released: 11 Jun 2008
On the broad verdant plain of Wako Kungo, there is what looks like a tidy oasis, so different from the vast semi-arid zones crossed when flying in from the capital 400km to the north. This is Aldeia Nova (new village), the most ambitious agro-industrial project in Angola. The 600 families who work there, on a kibbutz model, are those of Unita ex-fighters and of the national army, as well as displaced people who returned home after the war.
The Angolan state gave the Israeli company LR Group responsibility for the project in 2003, and it has done its work well: Aldeia Nova is a modern and integrated complex.
The plateau of Wako Kungo, surrounded by mountains at an altitude of 1,200m, at the heart of the province of Kwanza Sul, is home to 20,000 people; it is a fine agricultural region. At the beginning of the 1960s, when Lisbon sent tens of thousands of Portuguese peasants to the wealthiest of its colonies to occupy the best land and discourage the budding nationalist revolt, settlers from the island of Madeira founded a farming community there. The Portuguese dictator, António Salazar, christened it Cela after a fertile Portuguese region, showing the importance of Wako Kungo, where the near-temperate climate and abundant rainfall make possible arable crops and dairy farming. The state took over the complex after independence in 1975, but Unita’s invasion of the region ended that experiment.
In 2002, Wako Kungo was a ruin. Encouraged by the state, some private entrepreneurs risked investment in the disused farms. But it was not enough and they made little progress. Aldeia Nova was proposed, with the help of substantial state funding of $74m. "The aim was to help with the reinsertion of former guerrillas, while at the same time establishing a centre for agricultural development in a region whose potential everyone recognises," said the project’s director, José Cerqueira. He was among the leaders of a group of reformist economists of the 1980s who advocated a gradual opening of Angola. "We had to start from scratch: draining the flooded fields and removing the land mines (time-consuming and expensive work), repairing the roads, generating electricity, establishing irrigation systems and domestic water supplies, building and renovating the housing, the schools, even the church."
Aldeia Nova brings together several units: an animal feed production unit, another for milk and dairy products (including ice-cream), an incubator, an abattoir, silos and a tree nursery. It already produces eggs, beef and pork, as well as 120,000 chickens a year.
After school, in one of seven villages, a barefoot girl leads her cow into the enclosure, where a team of Angolans in boots and white overalls operate the latest milking machines. An electronic tag identifies the cow and its milk is credited to the family that farms it; 800 cows have been brought from South Africa by road, and will produce 4m litres of milk this year, as much as in the colonial era.
The girl’s village has about 100 neat houses with four furnished rooms, electricity (a luxury in Angola), a garden and an enclosure for domestic animals. Each family has been given 30 hectares: three for the family vegetable plot and 27 for cooperative farming (corn, sorghum, soya and sunflowers); they share tractors and harvesters. Outgoings are set against the value of the produce.
A small team of Angolans trained in management, agricultural techniques and the sharing of production techniques is preparing for a gradual takeover from the Israeli expatriates. (Higher level training is done in Israel.) Angola’s president, José Eduardo Dos Santos, who takes a close interest in the project’s development, has decided there will be more Aldeia Novas in nine further provinces. The Israeli export-credit agency ASHRA has increased its funding to $500m, an astonishing investment in the long-neglected agricultural sector. (Israeli companies established a foothold in Angola in 1993. Besides weapons, their main focus was until recently diamonds.)
But for Fernando Pacheco, a sociologist who specialises in rural affairs, Aldeia Nova does not provide a model of sustainable development. He questions the economic viability of the complex and predicts difficulties in using the technology once the Israeli team has gone. He deems the cost of installing each family ($30,000) is disproportionately high, and claims that the Portuguese model for Aldeia Nova cannot be divorced from its function in the colonial economy. He wants the entire national farm policy to be rethought.
Augusta Conchiglia is a journalist and an expert on Angola. – translated by Tom Hill
Copyright © 2008 Le Monde diplomatique |
