President João Lourenço appealed this Tuesday to national union and to appreciation of achievements achievedarguing that the country’s development “is not achievable in just two decades of peace”. The head of state spoke at Praça da República, in Luanda, during the celebrations of 50 years of Angolan independence.
Lourenço stressed that Angola is “taking firm steps to break the cycle of underdevelopment”highlighting the Lobito Corridor, the strengthening of the private sector and investment in education as fundamental axes of progress – with the end of the civil war, which destroyed a large part of the country between 1975 and 2002.
He added that development does not depend only on government action, but “on the collective effort of the entire society”.
At the international level, he was apprehensive about the “trivialization of human life” in several armed conflicts and lamented the “impotence” of the United Nations in the face of the excesses of the great powers. He reiterated the defense of multilateralism, the need for a reform of the United Nations and called for an end to war in Ukraineas well as the creation of the State of Palestine.
The Angolan President said that the country has a “very special” sensitivity to the issues of war, peace and the freedom and independence of people, having gone through this experience and lived several decades in conflict, evoking its own history.
Evoking the country’s history, João Lourenço criticized the legacy of Portuguese colonialism, remembering that Angola was “oppressed and enslaved for centuries”.
He also mentioned that, shortly after independence, Angola faced the regime of apartheidwhich represented a permanent threat to the region, stating that the country ran “serious risk of being colonized twice in such a short space of time”.
The President highlighted the role of Angola in the liberation of Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, contributing to the end of apartheid in Southern Africa. He also expressed concern about conflicts in the Sahel, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congowarning of the danger of balkanization and the reappearance of terrorist groups on the continent.
“We are very concerned about the reappearance and proliferation of terrorist groups in certain parts of our planet and in Africa in particular”, he lamented.