Universo - Sonangol EP

Transcription

SONANGOL UNIVERSO
Universo
www.universo-magazine.com
DECEMBER 2012
Happy
Birthday
Sonangol
London!
ISSUE 36 – DECEMBER 2012
ANGOLA GERMANY:
WILD FRONTIERS:
CUISINE:
Engineering success
Cross-border conservation
Thought for food
INSIDE:
oil and gas news
Brazuk Ltd
Board Members
Francisco de Lemos José Maria
(President), Mateus de Brito, Anabela
Fonseca, Sebastião Gaspar Martins,
Fernando Roberto, Baptista Sumbe,
Raquel Vunge
4
ANGOLA NEWS BRIEFING
President honours Congo Kings; Gove Dam
restarts; Cacuso rail link; Palancas Negras
football team through to finals; Angola polio
Sonangol Department for
Communication & Image
victory commemorated; Cabinda’s ports get
$1 billion-dollar investment
Director
João Rosa Santos
6
ANGOLA-GERMANY:
Corporate Communications Assistants
Nadiejda Santos, Lúcio Santos, Sarissari
Diniz, José Mota, Beatriz Silva, Paula
Almeida, Sandra Teixeira, Marta Sousa,
Hélder Sirgado, Kimesso Kissoka
Sub Editor
Ron Gribble
Circulation Manager
Matthew Alexander
Project Consultants
Nathalie MacCarthy
Mauro Perillo
Group President
John Charles Gasser
Universo is produced by Impact Media
Custom Publishing. The views expressed
in the publication are not necessarily
those of Sonangol or the publishers.
Reproduction in whole or in part
without prior permission is prohibited.
This magazine is distributed to a closed
circulation. To receive a free copy:
circulation@universo-magazine.com
Circulation: 17,000
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www.universo-magazine.com
Cover: Viewgene
Partnership in high technology and training
A note of
optimism
14
COOK’S TOUR OF ANGOLA’S KITCHENS
What tickles Angola’s tastebuds
A
20
LUANDA’S EMBRACE:
ngola’s remarkable economic growth is much more than just
a building boom. Important quality-of-life changes are also
under way, often going unnoticed by many.
One case in point is Luanda Bay’s shoreline makeover.
As well as the project’s obvious success in removing traffic bottlenecks
and opening up the improved leisure area to all, the removal of waste
water and other pollutants provides cleaner water and sweetersmelling air as well as an improved sea-life habitat.
Walkers now delight in the sight of densely-packed shoals of fish
turning the water into a bubbling cauldron as they leap and feed on
small fry. Priceless.
Another overlooked quality upgrade in Angola’s everyday life is in
its service industries. Qualified younger people, many trained abroad,
now offer services matching those of any developed economy.
Recently having to set up a mobile broadband connection – an
essential item for any visiting businessman – a visit to a small, innercity mobile phone shop was rewarded with helpful, speedy service
from the staff, delivered with smiles. Hugely satisfying.
Angola is getting there, and not just in the built environment!
John Kolodziejski
Editor
2 SONANGOL UNIVERSO
THE BENGO REGION
Providing for Luanda’s growth and leisure
28
PROLONGING ANGOLA’S OIL BENEFITS
The new sovereign wealth fund
32
KINGDOM OF THE WILD FRONTIERS
A vast cross-border conservation area takes shape
40
PARALYMPICS TEAM STRIKES GOLD
Talisman Sayovo gains gold again
42
SONANGOL NEWS BRIEFING
Sonangol and Maersk oil find; ZEE latest; new
fuel depot at Kuando Kubango; Sonangol Starfish
returns Brazil block; Team Schlesser denied World
Cup win; Sonangol grants 500 scholarships; Rio
Oil and Gas
44 LONDON REGENERATION
Sonangol Ltd turns thirty
14
Brazuk Ltd
Art Director
Tony Hill
20
Leslie Crookes
Editor
John Kolodziejski
ENGINEERING SUCCESS
32
Henrique Malungo, courtesy of BP Angola
Publisher
Sheila O’Callaghan
6
Lula Ahrens
Universo is the international
magazine of Sonangol
© Photographer: Jens Görlich © CGI: MO CGI GbR
Contents
40
DECEMBER 2012 3
Angola news briefing
Angola news briefing
■ President José Eduardo dos Santos has laid a
statue foundation stone commemorating the kings
of the once powerful ancient Kingdom of the Congo
which included parts of present-day Angola.
The act took place at M’banza Congo in Zaire
province, where the government aims to raise the
status of the city to an UNESCO World Heritage
Site and help make it an historic tourist attraction.
Minister for Culture Rosa Maria Martins da Cruz
e Silva said the statue was also a tribute to King
Dom Antonió the First, who ruled Congo 16611665. M’banza Congo was then the main city on
the west coast of Africa and had a population of
44,000 including around 4,000 Europeans.
Billion-dollar
ports bonanza
■ Over $1 billion is to be invested in Cabinda province
ports over the next five years, says Transport Minister
Augusto da Silva Tomás. He made the announcement
during the opening ceremony of the new pier at
Cabinda port, which he said was just the starting point
of a larger programme.
The minister revealed that construction of a new
deepwater port would go ahead at Caio, also in
Cabinda province: “We are doing our best so that the
port gains an important role in the group of national
and neighbouring countries’ ports, namely those
in the two Congos.” He added that the investment
was proof of the Angolan government’s strong
commitment to development and better wealth
distribution in the country.
■ In August, Angola commemorated a year without any new polio
cases being reported. In 2010 there were 33 cases and just five in 2011,
while in the 12 months to August none were reported. The last case
registered was that of a 14-months-old child in Uíge province in July
2011. The success is attributed to improved disease surveillance and
mass polio vaccination campaigns, along with greater access to safe
water, sanitation and hygiene.
Cacuso rail link
ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty
■ Rail company Caminhos de Ferro de Luanda (CFL) is to
■ Angola’s national side, the Palancas Negras, beat Zimbabwe 2-0 in
Luanda in October. Both goals, scored in the first five minutes, came
from team talisman and former Manchester United player Manucho. The
Palancas turned around a 3-1 defeat suffered in the first leg match in
Harare and qualified thanks to their away goal.
The result means Angola go through to the finals of the Africa Cup of
Nations for a fifth successive campaign. The AFCON finals will be held in
South Africa in 2013. The Palancas’ win was the team’s second victory in
three matches for their Uruguayan coach Gustavo Ferrín who took over
in July.
4 SONANGOL UNIVERSO
build a new branchline off the Luanda-Malange route to
serve the rich agribusiness lands around Cacuso.
Two main sites will benefit: Biocom, where an
ambitious sugar and ethanol complex has been ramping
up production to meet Angola’s sugar needs and has
the prospect of producing biofuel as well; and Pungo
Andongo, a huge irrigated farming area producing a large
range of agricultural products.
Gove Dam restarts
■ President dos Santos reopened the Gove Dam in
Huambo province at the end of August. The 60MW
hydropower plant on the River Cunene had been off-line
for over 20 years. The revamp means more power for
industry in Huambo and Bié provinces. There are around
120 industries in Huambo, and the dam’s energy is likely to
boost interest in a new greenfield industrial park at Caála.
Angola polio
victory
Rob Byron
President
honours
Congo Kings
Brazuk Ltd
Palancas Negras
through to finals
FIGURED OUT
$5 billion
start-up pot for Angola’s sovereign wealth fund
Angola in numbers
100,000 tonnes
Bengo’s banana crop for 2012/2013
20 million tonnes
annual future output from Kassinga iron ore mine
14
number of Angolan airports totally upgraded by 2014
15 million
annual passenger capacity at new Luanda Airport hub
DECEMBER 2012 5
Martin Lehmann
INTERNATIONAL
ANGOLA-GERMANY:
ENGINEERING
SUCCESS
The most obvious evidence of Germany’s presence
in Angola is the array of high-quality vehicles on its
roads. However, economic interchanges between
the two countries are taking place in other, often
less visible areas. Universo takes a closer look
6 SONANGOL UNIVERSO
DECEMBER 2012 7
INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL
President dos Santos also indicated there
would be a German role in developing
much-needed training and education to
aid Angola’s industrialisation. Education,
8 SONANGOL UNIVERSO
Angop
President dos Santos alongside Chancellor Merkel during her 2011 visit to Angola
he said, was key to enabling all Angolans
to take part in the life of Angolan society.
He pointed out to journalists that when
Angola achieved independence there had
been a 98 per cent illiteracy rate. “That
data is the starting point, and although
much improved since, there is still a lack of
qualified personnel in sufficient numbers,
which is the condition for getting value
from Angola’s potentially rich land.”
Germany’s ambassador Jörg-Werner
Marquardt agrees that one of the greatest
constraints on social and economic
development is a shortage of skilled workers.
“We give a great deal of support to
professional training because we believe
that without qualified people we won’t
have sustainable development,” he told
Jornal de Angola.
Consequently, one of the main thrusts of
Germany’s co-operation efforts in Angola is
vocational. Its aim is to help build Angola’s
human capital to aid industrialisation and
economic diversification as well as socioeconomic integration.
Vocational training, widely viewed as
a key ingredient to Germany’s economic
success, is supported in Angola under
a bilateral government-to-government
agreement by the German Agency for
International Cooperation (GIZ) on behalf of
the German Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
GIZ has been working in Angola since
1995, initially helping in food security,
peace-building and rehabilitating the
physically handicapped. More recently,
German government support has
concentrated its efforts on aiding Angola’s
vocational education, training and
business development.
GIZ is addressing this problem through
helping reform vocational training under
the Ministry of Public Administration,
Employment and Social Security
(Mapess), notably in construction. One
of Germany’s success stories has been its
apprenticeship scheme; which combines
on-the-job learning with formal college
training. Just over half of Germany’s young
people go through this system. There are
more than 340 recognised professions
where this training qualification is a
condition of employment.
GIZ work in Angola includes capacitybuilding for defining occupational
profiles, skill requirements, curricula and
test item development as well as training
for certain trades such as bricklaying and
installing domestic electrical wiring. The
organisation has done this by calling on
practitioners to contribute to and agree
on the requisite skills to be learnt.
GIZ has also held seminars aimed
at promoting small and medium-sized
enterprises in Angola. Germany’s powerful
Lufthansa flies to Luanda twice weekly
Chancellor Merkel’s visit was
“written in letters of gold
in the history of relations
between the two countries”
German companies
with offices
in Angola
ASGM (VW)
BAUER Angola
Bayer HealthCare
German-backed trainees in Luanda
Commerzbank
DHL Internacional (Angola)
Ferrostaal AG
GAUFF Engineering
GIZ International Services
Krones Angola
Kuehne + Nagel (Angola)
Lufthansa
Nehlsen Ambiente Angola
Nokia Siemens Networks
Schenker AG
Sertopo
GIZ-FormPRO copyright R.Maro
Training and education
© Photographer: Jens Görlich © CGI: MO CGI GbR
A
ngola is well aware of Germany’s
well-deserved global reputation
for reliable, quality engineering.
Luanda’s police use Audi cars
to patrol the streets, while other imposing
German vehicles such as BMWs and
Mercedes-Benz grace Angola’s newlyrebuilt roads from Cabinda to Cunene.
President José Eduardo dos Santos
expressed his own confidence in German
engineering prowess during the visit
of Chancellor Angela Merkel in July
last year when he said her country
would be the preferred partner in Angola’s
energy projects.
“I informed her that Angola will build
three large power dams over the next
few years and the electromechanical
equipment used in these powerproduction plants would be of German
origin,” the president said. The equipment,
mainly turbines, would be worth around
€1 billion, he added.
Germany’s Voith and Siemens are seen
as the likely beneficiaries of this verbal
agreement, given that Voith supplied
the turbines for the recently upgraded
Cambambe Dam near Dondo.
The first of three dams slated to use
the German equipment is the country’s
largest power project, the 2,067 megawatt
Laúca Dam in Kwanza Norte province.
Construction work began in June and the
dam is expected to come on-line in July 2016.
President dos Santos described the
joint declaration of common intent during
Chancellor Merkel’s visit as “written in
letters of gold in the history of relations
between the two countries”.
The chancellor was the first German
head of government to visit Angola.
She agreed to a “wide-ranging political
partnership” between the two countries,
which included the creation of a bilateral
commission charged with developing
political, social, economic, cultural,
scientific and educational relations.
Siemens SA Angola
TrevoTech
C Woermann Angola
Source: German Embassy, Luanda
DECEMBER 2012 9
INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL
Pipe-laying in Lubango
WATER
Water supply: exploration, storage,
transport and distribution
Waste-water: drainage, treatment,
and re-use of treated water and sludge
ENVIRONMENT
Solid-waste management
TRANSPORT
Urban transportation solutions (roads, rails and parking)
Courtesy GAUFF Engineering
ENERGY
Hydropower
Renewables (solar and wind energy)
AGRICULTURE
Rural development and organisation
Dams and irrigation
Rural transportation
economy is mainly based on the small and
medium-sized companies which account
for 80 per cent of its GDP.
Angola-Germany trade
Angola is Germany’s third most important
market in sub-Saharan Africa. Bilateral
trade tripled to $1.5 billion last year,
rocketing from just $491 million in 2010.
The 2011 figure was atypical given that
German access to Libyan oil was blocked
and Angola thus filled the supply gap, but
in future Germany is expected to buy more
hydrocarbons from Angola given that the
Soyo liquefied natural gas plant is now up
and running.
While Angola currently sells mainly
crude to Germany, German exports to
Angola are much more diversified. Apart
from vehicles, German sales include oil
and gas-sector equipment for the offshore
industry, construction plant, high-tech
hospital apparatus, bottling and packaging
equipment,
telecommunications,
electrical equipment, pharmaceuticals,
10 SONANGOL UNIVERSO
engineering-consultancy services and
water-supply systems.
GAUFF fast track
One of Germany’s most prominent
companies in Angola is Nuremberg-based
GAUFF Engineering. Founded by 81-yearold patriarch Helmut P. Gauff, it has been
active in the country since 1995.
GAUFF started operations on the
continent in 1965 and has gained
experience in more than 30 African
countries. The company assists the
reconstruction and modernisation of
public and social infrastructure in Angola
with efficient “Fast Track Solutions”.
GAUFF’s main activities involve
engineering, procurement, and project
and operation management for public
and industrial infrastructure projects –
such as urban and rural roads, parking
areas, road and rail transportation,
bridges, water supply and waste-water
systems, hydropower, renewable energy
and rural development.
As part of its Fast Track Solutions,
GAUFF offers close co-operation with
German banks, which can provide tailormade long-term financing.
Since its arrival in Angola, GAUFF has
executed many engineering services for a
number of government ministries, such
as studies for improving Luanda’s urban
transport. Since 2004, GAUFF has been
active in designing and supervising the
reconstruction of long-distance highways
totalling more than 1,000km in different
Angolan provinces. A large part of these
highways benefited from GAUFF’s help in
arranging finance as part of its Fast Track
Solutions scheme.
The company has also been supporting
Luanda’s water-supply company EPAL
since 2003 in its planning and investment
for rehabilitating and extending urban
supply systems. As an EPPM (Engineering
Procurement and Project Management)
consultant, GAUFF is currently also
responsible for the first phase of the
development of the water supply and
meeting of commitments, and punctuality
in meetings as well as in meeting
timetables agreed in contractual clauses
– in other words, responsibility in their
approach,” he says.
During his long stay in Germany,
Ferraz was a leader of the Angolan student
community. Consequently, he travelled
throughout the country and got to know
all 16 federal states.
“Learning the language opened many
doors for me and made it easier to fit in
socially. It was a much smoother and
deeper relationship.”
Ferraz read widely in German and,
being passionate about music, appreciated
contemporary German artistes such as
Matthias Reim, Modern Talking and
Herbert Grönemeyer.
Ferraz said his favourite German dish
was Maultaschen, a kind of pasta envelope,
similar to ravioli, filled with minced meat
in hollandaise sauce or cream, as well as
the famous Nuremberg sausages.
“The attractions of working for a
German company are seriousness,
thoroughness and responsibility in
their approach” – Orlando Ferraz
Some prominent Germans
Albert Einstein – physicist
Brazuk Ltd
GAUFF’s activities in Angola
waste-water system of Lubango, with an
investment and finance package of €90
million. Lubango has a very fast-growing
population of around 1.2 million.
Apart from these activities, GAUFF
has also drawn up proposals for minihydropower plants for decentralised
energy supplies to various provinces.
The company employs many
Angolans and offers them practical and
theoretical training based on the German
apprenticeship system, which is a very
important aspect in all the projects
The promotion of capable young
Angolan technicians together with other
German partners and universities is an
important objective in GAUFF’s strategy.
For many years, it has organised studies
for its Angolan employees in Europe.
To fulfil its social responsibility, the
GAUFF Foundation co-operates actively
with Angolan social foundations and
promotes and assists, among other
activities, several orphanages in Angola
and sports clubs in the provinces.
Angolan Orlando Ferraz (pictured
right) has been with GAUFF for seven years,
having spent a total of 17 years in Germany
where he studied at the Universities of
Bonn and North Rhine-Westphalia.
“The most attractive points in working
for a German company are those that
have to do with the virtues by which
the Germans are known: seriousness,
thoroughness in the execution and
Johannes Gutenberg – inventor of the printing press
Felix Hoffmann – inventor of aspirin
Rudolf Diesel – inventor of the diesel engine
Karl Benz – inventor of the petrol-engine car
Adolf Dassler – inventor of Adidas sports shoes
DECEMBER 2012 11
INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL
Energy generation, transmission and distribution
Siemens
Siemens Angola: areas of activity
Water projects
Oil industry equipment
Gas turbines, compressors
Mining
Electrical and engineering services and maintenance
Automation and instrumentation
Airport equipment
Healthcare
Siemens
Telecommunications
Germany’s Siemens, one of the world’s
leading engineering conglomerates, is
also present in Angola. The company had
a global turnover of €73.5 billion last year.
Angola accounted for a small but growing
part of this figure.
Siemens only re-established offices
in Angola in 2005 after an absence of
many years. Siemens Angola had sales of
€10.5 million in 2011 but its order book,
worth €15.8 million, pointed to growth.
The company offers a broad range of
equipment, engineering and related
services for industry, energy, healthcare
and infrastructure.
Current Siemens activity in Angola
includes power-generation and waterpumping systems, notably for the important
offshore oil industry where Sonangol,
Chevron and Total are clients. Siemens
installed eight gas turbines to power Angola
LNG’s Soyo plant and has supplied an
11.5MW generator for Luanda’s refinery.
Its other high-profile projects in
Angola are a telecommunications network
operation in partnership with Nokia and
the supply of a radiotherapy apparatus to
the Girassol Clinic. Siemens has supplied
airport, office and hotel-security equipment
and has also provided instrumentation for
the Catumbela cement plant near Lobito.
Siemens has become heavily involved
in supporting education and training in
Angola. “For Siemens, training engineers
and managers is a core preoccupation in
Angola and a contribution the company
can make to the country,” says Angolanborn Jorge Tropa, chief executive of
Siemens Angola.
“It’s very challenging to be able to help
Angola find sustainable answers for the
future. It’s equally very gratifying for me
to create job places and give development
opportunities to people who by their
work ensure their own and their families’
sustenance,” he says.
Siemens trains engineers and clients
in the area of energy distribution,
instrumentation and maintenance of
turbines and electronic equipment, and
to this end its ATEC training academy
in Portugal has signed a co-operation
agreement with Angola’s Integrated Centre
for Technological Training (Cinfotec).
Siemens also recently made an
agreement with Angola’s Higher Polytechnic
for Technology and Science (ISPTEC) for cooperation in developing human resources,
projects and technologies in engineering,
economics and management.
Looking ahead
Siemens is already highly involved in
Brazil’s pre-salt oil deposits development,
an area in which Angola is currently taking
its first tentative steps.
Chemtech, Siemens’ Brazilian specialist
engineering subsidiary, has a leading role
in contracts for engineering equipment
employed in exploiting Brazil’s pre-salt
deposits. The company’s training and
experience in Brazil will enable Angola
to prepare to meet the technological
challenges of exploiting its own pre-salt oil.
In order to facilitate this transfer of knowhow, Siemens offers work experience for
Angolan engineers who want to attend
the Siemens corporate academy in Brazil
to improve their engineering skills and
project management.
Armed with this specialist training,
Siemens and its Angolan engineers will be in
a better position to win contracts and supply
services for Angola’s pre-salt ventures.
food but manages the whole logistics chain
involved in supplying airline meals, from
sourcing the food to packaging and placing
it on board planes.
Germany’s LSG Sky Chefs is one of the
world’s largest airline-catering companies
and last year produced about 492 million
meals for more than 300 companies
around the globe.
Saving value
Two German firms, Krones AG and
Ferrostaal AG, are fulfilling a crucial need
in converting Angolan raw materials into
consumer goods.
Krones AG boasts that a fifth of the
world’s bottles has been filled, labelled or
packaged on its machines. The company
is responsible for the canning and bottling
machinery at the Sequent Brewery, 35km
outside Luanda.
Ferrostaal AG is responsible for the
Giasop fruit and tomato-processing
plant at N’gola Lombo, near Porto
Amboim in Kwanza Sul. This flexible
plant produces mango, passion fruit,
guava and pineapple nectar and also
tomato paste. Processing up to five
tonnes an hour of mangoes or tomatoes,
the plant can produce an hourly output
of 5,000 gable-topped cartons.
Storage and shipment of Angolan
foodstuffs, especially fruit and vegetables, has been a bottleneck for the
country’s farmers. Companies such as
Ferrostaal provide an outlet for excess
fresh produce that might otherwise have
gone to waste. With the building of such
packaging plants, farmers, especially
small family holdings, can now step up
production confident that their efforts
will be rewarded. p
Voith
Siemens solutions shop
LSG – food for flight
Angola’s flagship airline TAAG was mindful
of German industry’s prompt and efficient
delivery of quality products when it chose
LSG Sky Chefs as its partner in producing
meals for its passengers.
The new company LSG, Sky Chefs
TAAG Angola started operations in midJuly. Its owners are TAAG (35%), Germany’s
number one carrier Lufthansa (40%),
Angola Air Catering (20%) and Angolan
airports authority Enana (5%).
Initially the facility will serve just TAAG
operations and Lufthansa, which has two
flights a week to Frankfurt, but it will in
future cater for other airlines.
The $12 million unit at Luanda Airport
employs 200 people and has the capacity
to make between 6,000 and 7,000 meals a
day. The company not only prepares the
German companies are likely to benefit from Angolan dam contracts
DECEMBER 2012 13
CULTURE
With Luanda’s numerous international restaurants, Angola’s own varied and
colourful cuisine is sometimes unjustly overlooked. In such a large and
culturally-rich country, the discovery of its food habits will always be an
adventure. Universo provides a taster
T
By Lula Ahrens
he visitor’s first introduction to Angolan food is
usually funge or pirão, bland but filling dishes
that serve as the base of most meals and are often
combined with fish, chicken or meat and sauce.
Funge de bombo, more common in northern Angola, is
a gelatinous, colourless paste made from corn or cassava
flour (fubá). The yellowish pirão, similar to polenta, is
made from cornflour and is more commonly eaten in the
south. During weekends, Angolan families typically sit
down to funge during the day and switch to grilled meat
and fish at night. But, as with everything else in Angola,
there is a lot more to discover.
Adventurous, experimental connoisseurs might want
to try Angolan specialities such as jinguinga – goat tripe
and blood –from Malange province; the Kwanza Norte
delicacy kifula – game meat served with boiled and toasted
palm-tree grasshoppers – or mafuma, frog meat from
Cunene. Those who prefer a safer start will love caldeirada
de cabrito, goat-meat stew with rice, traditionally served
on Angolan Independence Day (November 11), or kizaka,
the finely mashed, spinach-like leaves of the manioc plant
seasoned and mixed with ground peanuts.
Try mukua, the traditional Angolan dried fruit from the
country’s emblematic baobab tree, it is often used to make
ice cream. Cocada amarela (yellow coconut pudding),
made with sugar, grated coconut, egg yolks and ground
cinnamon, is less exotic but also delicious.
Historic overview
Five centuries of Portuguese colonisation heavily
influenced Angolan cuisine. In most restaurants,
Portuguese dishes such as seafood rice or bacalhau com
natas (cod with cream) will be popular and available.
Brazilian and other European influences have also had
their impact.
The roots of Angola’s major ethnic groups can be traced
in local cuisine. The coastal areas of Luanda, Benguela and
Namibe are known for their variety of seafood. Fish stews
including caldeirada de peixe and muzongue are made
from whatever is available, and served with rice.
Angolan fish stews such as calulu and mufete de
cacusso are believed to be excellent hangover cures that
work wonders even before the very first headache sets in!
A standard, superb condiment at an Angolan lunch
or dinner table is gindungu, a spicy sauce made of
chilli pepper, garlic, onion and sometimes brandy. Not
surprisingly, some believe that the sauce is an aphrodisiac.
In central Angolan villages, you will find steamed or
boiled green vegetables, peas, beans, cereals and game
meat. Traditional game meats consumed in parts of Angola
include veal, deer, wildebeest and warthog.
Typical Angolan ingredients generally include flour,
beans, rice, fish, chicken, egg, sweet potatoes, manioc
(cassava), yams, tomatoes, onions, peanuts, okra and
various spices such as chilli. Kizaka manioc plant leaves are
DECEMBER 2012 15
CULTURE
Faraways
Engineer Ana, 33, studied in London, UK,
and moved back to Angola in 2004 to work
for an international oil company. One of
the things she enjoys most about being
back in Luanda is the food.
Walking past women selling vegetables
on the street, she says: “With the decrease
in landmine exposure and an increase
in farming, you see more and more
traditional leaves reappearing in the
market. I’m trying out traditional dishes
that I never even knew existed for instance,
a particular mushroom – turtulho - cooked
with peanuts. It’s from Malange.”
Luanda boasts fancy Portuguese,
Chinese, French, Brazilian, Cape Verdian,
Ethiopian and even Japanese restaurants,
and Ana visits them frequently. She
remembers that during the civil war food
was scarce. “There used to be a system
of food coupons, with people standing in
queues for hours. Even simple things like
apples used to be a rarity.”
Shipping co-ordinator Gildo, 33, was
brought up in Angola. He lived in South
Africa from 1996 until 2000, and then in
Canada until 2004.
“During the war, the food supply in
Luanda was very limited,” he recalls. “We
ate fried carapau, a mackerel-like fish, with
rice, funge or bean soup, and a few canned
foods. Dairy products, most other fish
types and fruit and vegetables were hardly
ever available.
“The roads weren’t safe, so you couldn’t
transport produce from the provinces to
Luanda. Bread was a luxury. Hundreds
of people used to queue for hours before
their local shop opened. Some put down
in paper with a little stick inside. You lick
it like an ice cream. One of my favourite
traditional sweets is what Angolans call
‘goats’ droppings’. It is condensed milk,
heated until brown, and turned into little
balls,” he says.
Ana also has sweet memories of
her Luanda childhood. “We used to eat
mukua ice cream (made from baobab
fruit), paracuca and doce de coco (dry
coconut pancake), all made and sold by
grandma. Yummy.”
Unlike most people, Gildo was not
impressed by South African cuisine and
missed Angolan flavours. “While we lived
there, my sister used to cook Angolan food
at home. Friends brought kizaka, dried fish
and even fubá whenever they visited.” p
Lula Ahrens
Angolans and their
favourite dishes
a stone, went back home and returned
later. Others would move the stone ahead.
People respected each other.”
At home, Gildo and his family used to
make omelettes with water and powdered
eggs, which they bought in 50 kilo bags.
Today, he enjoys a real omelette at Angolan
restaurant Jango Veleiro, on the Ilha.
“Aah... This is so much better than the
dried version. You knew it was egg, but it
was not the real deal,” he says.
“Sweets and desserts were almost nonexistent, except during Christmas. But
people made homemade sweets such as
paracuca, which are sugar-covered peanuts
in a paper cone. You still see these quite a
lot, but they are no longer sold in paper.
“Pirulito is melted, hardened sugar
Lula Ahrens
Angola also produces a great variety of
drinks. Many of them are made at home
from bananas, potatoes and cassava skin.
Kissangua, a popular drink in the south, is
made from cornflour.
Mongozo, which means ‘cheers!’ in
the language of the Chokwe people, is a
beer traditionally made from palm nuts.
The Chokwe started brewing this beer
before colonial times. The fact that it is
exported to various countries, including
Belgium, Europe’s beer mecca, says a lot
about its quality.
Angola also produces an impressive
variety of homemade spirits such as the
Kwanza Norte provincial specialty capatica
made from bananas; the maize-based
caporroto from Malange; cazi or caxipembe
made from potato and cassava skin; cornbased kimbombo; and the palm wines
maluva or ocisangua, made with palm-tree
juice, a northern Angolan favourite.
Gonguenha is made from toasted manioc
flour, while ualende from the province of Bié
can be made from sugarcane, sweet potato,
corn or fruits. Other beverages include the
homemade vodka kapuka, the honey-based
ovingundu and homemade Angolan whisky,
whiskey kota.
Kissangua, a Southern Angolan
traditional non-alcoholic drink made of
cornflour, is sometimes used in indigenous
healing rituals. Angola’s oldest and most
celebrated commercial beer brand, of
course, is Cuca, which is brewed in Luanda.
Eka (brewed in Dondo, Kwanza Norte),
N’gola (Lubango) and Nocal (Luanda) are
also popular.
Lula Ahrens
Cheers!
Lula Ahrens
mostly consumed as cooked greens. Many
Angolans have chickens or goats running
around their properties, but cabrito (goat)
is only served on special occasions.
Beautiful, fresh and flavoursome
Angolan fruits, vegetables, potatoes and
herbs are sold in local supermarkets such
as Kero and Martal, as well as at open
markets and in the street.
In Luanda, you will often find that the
simplest local restaurants serve the best
food. On the southern side of Luanda’s long
protective peninsula, the Ilha, as you drive
from the city centre bay area, is the Chicala
neighbourhood. Here you will find one of
Luanda’s most well-known fish markets
(the other is on the Samba highway) as well
as two restaurants right next to each other.
Some of Luanda’s best grilled fish
is served right there for just $20 a head.
Clients choose their freshly-caught fish
from a bucket, after which it is gutted,
cleaned and grilled. The whole fish is
then served as a mufete de cacusso, with a
delicious sauce made of chopped onions,
baked bananas and sweet potatoes as
well as beans in palm oil (see recipe on
page 19).
CULTURE
DECEMBER 2012 17
Lula Ahrens
CULTURE
CULTURE
Ingredients:
250g cassava flour (fubá), 500ml water
Mufete de Cacusso (from Bengo province)
Calulu, the alternative, is from Kwanza Sul
Traditional method:
R FISH
U
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B
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I
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ACROSS
ON THE BEACH
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THE ROAD, OR A
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SAMBA NEARBY,
KUEIROS
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SAYS COOK
Boil a cooking pot of water and as soon
as it is bubbling remove it from the flame
and place the pot on the floor. Wrap a cloth
around the base of the pot and hold steady
with your feet. For perfect funge you need
twice as much water as cassava flour. Add
the flour to the hot water in one go and beat
energetically with a 35cm (or longer) funge
stick. The mixture thickens rapidly, so beat
it thoroughly or you will end up with lumps
rather than a smooth dough-like porridge.
Ingredients:
Fresh river tilapia, raw onion, palm oil, beans,
lemon, sweet potato, plantain and cassava
Preparation method:
Season the fish with salt and oil and then
grill in an oven or over a charcoal fire.
Making the sauce:
Chop the onion finely; add lemon juice,
water, salt, pepper and oil.
Modern method:
Bring the water to the boil in a casserole dish.
Meanwhile, beat the cassava flour into a bowl
containing 500ml cold water until the mixture
is smooth and creamy. Add this to the boiling
water, whisking to combine the two. Stir until
the mixture is smooth. Then add a lid and
place in an oven pre-heated to 180°C. Bake
for about 45 minutes or until the mixture has
thickened to a dough-like consistency. This
will leave you with perfectly smooth funge
without all the hard work.
Cooking palm oil beans:
1 kg beans (approximately 2 lbs) 1 glass
palm oil, salt and if desired onion and garlic.
Cook the beans until tender. Add the palm
oil and salt. Simmer until the oil is hot, and
serve immediately with boiled sweet potato,
plantain and cassava.
Ingredients:
1 chicken, 1 large onion, 2 cups of palm hash
(by-product of palm oil), 4 cloves of garlic, ½ kg
okra, tomatoes
Faraways
Preparation:
Season the chicken with garlic, salt, black
pepper, lemon or vinegar. Add the chopped
onion, tomatoes and the palm hash. Place in
oven. When the chicken is almost done, add the
okra. When the okra is cooked, the muamba is
ready to be served. Accompany it with palm oil
beans, funge or rice.
DECEMBER 2012 19
LUANDA’S
EMBRACE:
THE BENGO REGION
PROVINCE
Bengo province and its contiguous areas
completely embrace urban Luanda. Universo
looks at the region’s role in relation to the capital
and its impressive development prospects
A
ll major growing cities need
surrounding wide open spaces
not just for future expansion but
also as a contrasting, clean-air
escape for their inhabitants to enjoy in their
leisure time. Bengo province and its former
municipalities Icolo e Bengo and Kissama*
provide the teeming capital Luanda
with the relief of greenery and expansive
beaches city dwellers often crave.
The importance any city’s adjacent
recreation area plays in the physical and
mental wellbeing of its inhabitants cannot
be underestimated. The quality of life for
the 10 million people living in the largely
treeless Brazilian mega-city of São Paulo is
much improved by the access to pristine
beaches and mountainous rainforest
within an hour’s drive.
Life, too, for the inhabitants of England’s
grey, formerly smoky industrial capital
Manchester, would have been intolerable
without the easy journey to the clean air on
the surrounding moorland hills.
Bottlenecks uncorked
Driving out of Luanda in any direction
towards the Bengo region has often been
a time-consuming affair owing to the city’s
notorious traffic jams. These bottlenecks
are gradually being cleared, thanks to the
Brazuk Ltd
Footnote
*Luanda province formally absorbed Icolo e
Bengo and Kissama in February “to address
the need to ensure greater efficiency in
the organisation and functioning of
institutions and services in the face of
urban growth”.
DECEMBER 2012 21
PROVINCE
The Bengo region is reaping great benefits
from the government’s hefty investment
in new infrastructure over the past decade.
Located just beyond the uncongested, fastmoving Luanda beltway, Bengo province,
Icolo e Bengo and Kissama are wellconnected to each other and enjoy speedy
routes to the industrial region of Viana and
to the rest of Angola.
This combination of good road
connections and the availability of space
was crucial to the decision to site two of
Angola’s largest greenfield projects in
Bengo; one is Luanda’s new international
airport hub, the other is a new deepwater
port. Luanda’s new airport will have
capacity for 15 million passengers a year.
Located 40km from the city centre, between
Viana and Bom Jesus, the airport will have
20 international and 11 domestic gates.
Its two double runways will be capable of
taking the Airbus 380, the world’s largest
passenger airliner. Work began in 2008
Super port
The new port’s go-ahead was announced
in November 2011 and detailed studies
are underway. Victor Carvalho, general
director of Angola’s Maritime and Port
Institute, said the port, to be built just
north of the busy fishing village of Barra do
Dande, 45km north of Luanda, will be one
of the largest in Africa.
The new development will ease
congestion at the old downtown Luanda
port and give extra capacity to Angola’s
rapidly expanding import-export trade.
The existing port of Luanda has very limited
space for expansion and its road access has
suffered from congestion for decades.
Initial plans envisage a long pier to
be built on the north bank of the Dande
River. This ‘arm’ will reach the deepest
water and also shelter the new port from
the predominantly southern sea current.
The pier will enable the loading of up
to 25 million tonnes a year of minerals,
mainly iron ore from Kwanza Norte, and
could also handle imported fertilisers.
Other port areas will be dedicated to the
loading and unloading of sea containers
and general cargo, and for supporting
Angola’s burgeoning offshore oil industry.
soap industries. In more recent years new
industries have chosen Bengo for their
businesses, thanks not only to the rapid
expansion of the oil industry but also to the
Angolan government’s efforts to diversify
the economy.
The government’s Luanda-Bengo
Special Economic Zone (ZEE) includes
Icolo e Bengo (now in Luanda province)
along with Dande, Nambuangongo and
Ambriz in Bengo. The ZEE also includes
Luanda’s main industrial focus, Viana, and
Cacuaco, which borders Bengo.
The ZEE was designed to boost the
industrialisation of the region to the north
and east of Luanda while absorbing labour
(14,000 jobs) and drawing residents from
the densely-populated conurbation to
its periphery.
The ZEE project, promoted by
Sonangol industrial arm SIIND has a target
of having 73 factories up and running by
2015. Enterprises operating in the zone
now number 17 and another nine units are
expected to start up by the end of this year,
reaching 53 units by 2014.
Angoflex, which runs Bengo’s largest
modern industry, started operations in 2005.
The company, a Sonangol jointventure with
France’s Technip, manufactures deepwater
steel-tube umbilicals for the oil industry.
Umbilicals are bundles of tubes, electric
cables and optical fibres which remotely
control and operate subsea equipment such
as wellheads.
Angoflex’s ‘spoolbase’, where umbilical
pipelines are literally rolled on to spools,
occupies a greenfield site just south of
Dande. It is one of the most advanced
industries of its kind in Africa. Around
400 people (90 per cent Angolan) work on
site welding and processing steel tubing
into lengths of up to 3km. The tubes
are laid out on a pier and then wound
onto giant wheels mounted on ships.
The jointed umbilical pipelines are later
unwound and straightened at oil and gasproduction sites.
Angoflex has the capacity to manufacture 300km of umbilicals a year. The
company already supplies BP and Total
for blocks 31 and 17 and has completed
export orders for Anadarko’s Jubilee project
in Ghana.
King banana
The resurgence of Bengo’s once-thriving
agricultural sector is leading to a renaissance in associated food-processing
industries. The undoubted kingpin of this
sector in Bengo is the banana. Afonso
Pedro Canga, Angola’s Minister of
Agriculture, says Angola is now selfsufficient in bananas.
Bengo has a firm belief that its booming
banana output will soon make it one of
(Right) River Dande
Key raw materials for Luanda’s construction industry
Mineral resources
Bengo’s geology and mineral resources
have played a key role in Angola’s economy.
The country’s modern oil industry dates
from 1915 when the ‘black gold’ was first
drilled near Dande.
In more recent years, Bengo’s generous
store of mineral wealth has provided large
amounts of high-quality aggregates for
roadbuilding and construction materials.
Hundreds of trucks each day ply between
Bengo’s quarries and gravel pits to supply
Luanda’s myriad construction sites. Bengo
has deposits of kaolin, chalk, asphalt,
limestone, iron, feldspar, sulphur and mica.
Industrial enterprises
Bengo has a long history of industrial
development. Before independence the
province had sugar, cotton, plastics and
Brazuk Ltd
Infrastructure
and completion of phase one is expected
in December 2013.
Brazuk Ltd
building of three major urban highways
heading north, south and east. As Bengo,
and the rest of Angola, becomes more
easily reached, its economic and tourism
potential is beginning to be realised.
Highways along the coast south from
Luanda towards Kissama and east towards
Icolo e Bengo and the Kwanza valley are
largely finished and are providing muchimproved access to the region.
However, the new highway heading
north from Luanda towards Caxito, Bengo’s
provincial capital, is only now approaching
completion after a complicated rebuild.
The vital northern coastal route takes
the lion’s share of Luanda’s heavy, slowmoving port district traffic, carrying
thousands of trucks each day to the rest of
the country.
The road building has been a tough task,
hindered by difficult geology, unplanned
land occupation in densely-populated
districts and high flood risks, but this is now
being overcome after a large-scale drainage
scheme and the construction of a four-lane
highway. Soon traffic jams will ease and
Bengo will be under an hour’s drive from
Luanda city centre.
PROVINCE
DECEMBER 2012 23
PROVINCE
Angola’s leading exports. To promote its
bananas, Caxito held its first Banana Fair
in February. Exhibitors from the provinces
of Kwanza Norte, Bengo, Benguela, Zaire,
Uíge, Kwanza Sul, Malange and Luanda
attended the event.
Abrahão Pio dos Santos Gourgel,
Angola’s Minister of Economy, said the
country might start exporting bananas
within the next two years, judging by
the growth recorded of this product.
Conditions, he said, had been created to
ensure a continued increase of quality
through planting systems and improved
technical assistance.
Agrolider, the Angolan agribusiness
giant and Caxito Banana Fair prizewinner,
forecasts it will produce 100,000 tonnes of
the fruit in the 2012-13 growing season,
compared with 54,000 tonnes in the
previous harvest.
Part of Agrolider’s crop comes from
the 2,500-hectare Caxito Rega irrigated
farming area, located in a former sugar
plantation near provincial capital Caxito.
Caxito Rega a government-managed
initiative with 70 per cent state ownership
was established in 2008.
An existing irrigation system including
23km of channels was renovated. Some
1,600 hectares of Caxito Rega are cultivated
by private companies and the rest by
family farmers and individuals.
A major step was taken to process
produce at the site in August 2012 when
a factory was opened, initially to process
and pack dried bananas and tomato
paste and pulp. Financed by Germany’s
Deutsche Bank and installed by Spain’s
Incatema Consulting, the plant has the
capacity to process 2.5 tonnes of tomatoes
and 750kg of dried bananas an hour. The
165 staff operators were trained in Spain
and Angola.
The crucial role played by process
plants such as these is that they absorb
excess produce, especially from small
farmers. This gives them an incentive to
grow greater volumes and gain a more
secure income, and also reduces wastage.
A key component of the project was the
arrival of electricity from the renovation of
the Mabubas Dam in June 2012. The dam
now has 25.6MW capacity compared to
17.8MW two decades ago just before it
stopped operating. Mabubas is initially
also supplying Luanda and Caxito but will
later extend power deliveries to the rest
of Bengo. Until now the region had been
using expensive diesel generators to make
up for the energy shortage.
The fertility of Bengo’s soils is
impressive. Agrolider’s 350-hectare
farming operations in Caxito also produce
papaya, melons, water melons and
eggplants. The company plans to grow
dessert grapes, mangoes, oranges and
tangerines at the site. Agrolider has another
145-hectare plantation at Bom Jesus where
it produces bananas, mangoes and grapes.
Bengo’s attractiveness as a place to
produce and process fruit has not been
Carlos Moco
Mark Clydesdale BZO
Angoflex spoolbase, Barra do Dande
lost on foreign companies. Ghana’s
ambassador visited the province recently
and said Ghanaian company Blue
Skies planned to produce mango and
pineapple concentrate for its juice brand.
The ambassador added that a Ghanaian
company was also considering setting up
a tyre plant in Bengo.
Coca-Cola has recently built a $36
million bottling plant at Bom Jesus
alongside the Kwanza River. The factory
not only has access to water but is well
placed for accessing Angola’s main
highways for its product distribution.
Tourism expansion
Another money-spinner shared by Bengo,
Icolo e Bengo, and especially Kissama, is
tourism. These areas can be reached easily
by new highways heading south and east
from the capital.
Kissama is home to Angola’s bestknown and most accessible wildlife
park, while Icolo e Bengo contains the
historic birthplace of Agostinho Neto, the
country’s first president, at Kaxicane near
Catete, and the national Christian shrine
of Muxima. Both sites are picturesquely
located alongside a wide section of the
slow-moving Kwanza River.
Also on the river the church of Our
Lady of Muxima, reputedly a site of
miracles, dates from the 16th century and
is the object of pilgrimages, especially in
September, when the faithful camp around
the shrine.
Muxima township is also overlooked
by an imposing Portuguese colonial fort
which affords dramatic views over the
rich lands along the banks of the Kwanza.
The fort was the scene of fighting between
Dutch and Portuguese troops in the 17th
century when the two maritime powers
fought each other around the globe, from
Brazil to the Far East.
Access to Muxima was recently
enhanced by the building of a new
highway which includes Angola’s longest
bridge at Cabala. Better communications
from Luanda and the rest of the country
to Muxima facilitated the arrival of an
estimated 500,000 people to the shrine this
year. The Bishop of Viana compared the
DECEMBER 2012 25
PROVINCE
Brazuk Ltd
of giraffes, zebras and hundreds of ostriches.
Today all these populations are recovering
fast and attracting more park visitors.
The park also boasts a park-ranger
training school, suggested by the German
aid organisation GTZ. This helped train
former soldiers and provide a civilian career
opportunity. Around 140 rangers have been
trained to date with assistance from the
South African Wildlife College.
An outstanding role in Kissama’s
revival was played by former South African
soldier turned park director Roland
Goetz over a ten-year period. Angolan
Miguel Savituma, who underwent onthe-job training as Goetz’s deputy and
also attended courses abroad has now
succeeded him.
Future plans involve extending the
special conservation area, securing it
against poachers and reintroducing more
wildlife such as roan and red buffalo. p
Brazuk Ltd
since President José Eduardo dos Santos
reopened it.
Three decades of poaching had
decimated its wildlife stock, but today
tourists can again visit the park with a
very good chance of seeing several species
of animals.
The park owes its turnaround to
‘Operation Noah’s Ark’. This project involved
reorganising the park administration and
protecting the animal population by a
more professional group of rangers. It also
meant installing a 21km fence to separate
a small special-conservation area in the
extreme north of the park and bringing in
excess numbers of animals from Botswana
and South Africa. The conservation area
is centred on the 50-bed tourist camp and
restaurant at Caua.
The first batches of animals included 35
elephants, eight elands, 12 wildebeests and
12 kudus. Later these were joined by dozens
Angola’s longest bridge – Cabala
Brazuk Ltd
Kissama National Park is a favourite tourist
destination for Angolans and is especially
popular among expatriates seeking a taste
of the ‘real Africa’. The 10,000-squarekilometre park with a 120km coastline
blessed with deserted beaches and a sea
heaving with fish and crustaceans, has
experienced a remarkable revival in its
animal populations over the past 12 years
The church of Our Lady of
Muxima, reputedly a site
of miracles, dates from the
16th century and is the object
of pilgrimages
Kissama’s rich red soils
Teunis Bakker
Regeneration
Muxima on the Kwanza
Brazuk Ltd
popularity of the shrine to other Catholic
pilgrim sites such as Lourdes in France,
Fátima in Portugal and Aparecida in Brazil.
Travelling north from Luanda, visitors
enter Bengo province by crossing the Bengo
River. The visitor’s first impression of
Bengo is of its greenery, sparse population
and densely-reeded lagoons which contrast
sharply with nearby urban Luanda.
The area around the reedy marshland
lake of Panguila adjacent to the Bengo
River boasts a population of black storks.
These impressive birds use their wings as
a cloak to shade their eyes while hunting
their prey in the wetlands. Kingfishers and
a wealth of other birds are easily spotted
in the area, making it one of the most
rewarding haunts for ornithologists in the
Luanda region.
Bengo’s coastline and lakes provide
a variety of fish for tourists to savour. In
Kissama, the area around Cabo Ledo is
renowned for its lobster.
PROVINCE
Bengo’s iconic black stork
DECEMBER 2012 27
FINANCE
FINANCE
PROLONGING
ANGOLA’S OIL
BENEFITS
Verkhovynets Taras
Angola has launched a sovereign wealth fund and thus joined a
prestigious list of resource-rich nations, which includes Norway and
the United Arab Emirates. Universo reports k
Photoatelier
A
ngola has announced the setting up
of a sovereign wealth fund. Fundo
Soberano de Angola (FSDEA) will
have a starting pot of $5 billion
which will be channelled into a mix of domestic
and international investments, with a focus on
emerging Asian economies.
The idea behind the fund is to use Angola’s
oil revenues prudently, to ensure that the
wealth of today lasts longer so that the country
can enjoy the legacy benefits of its oil even
when the crude has stopped flowing.
By creating the FSDEA, Angola will also
have a secondary buffer of capital reserves
should the price of oil fall rapidly and create
liquidity pressures on the economy as it did
in 2009.
The public unveiling of FSDEA in October
is the culmination of four years of planning after
President José Eduardo dos Santos first showed
an interest in creating a sovereign wealth fund
back in 2008.
With headquarters in Luanda, the fund
will manage a diverse investment portfolio
made up of global private and public stocks,
bonds, foreign currencies, financial derivatives,
commodities, treasury bills and property and
infrastructure funds.
The sovereign wealth fund will be topped
up on a monthly basis by an amount equivalent
to the revenue from 100,000 barrels of oil per
day. FSDEA representatives say it will publish
all its accounts so that people can monitor the
money flow.
Switzerland-based Quantum Global
Investment Management, which already works
with Banco Nacional de Angola, Angola’s central
bank, has been appointed as the initial liquidasset manager, although more financial houses
are expected to come on board in due course.
The FSDEA’s board of directors is made
up of its chairman Armando Manuel, who
is also Secretary for Economic Affairs in the
Angolan government, and two other members:
José Filomeno de Sousa dos Santos, a former
board member at Banco Kwanza Invest, and
Hugo Miguel Évora Gonçalves, previously of
Standard Bank.
“Angola is rich in natural resources, but
we understand that these are finite, so it is
imperative that the wealth they generate is used
to support the country’s social and economic
development,” said Manuel.
Armando Manuel
“Angola is rich in natural
resources, but we
understand that these are
finite, so it is imperative that
the wealth they generate
is used to support the
country’s social and
economic development”
– Armando Manuel
DECEMBER 2012 29
FINANCE
FINANCE
Other leading sovereign wealth funds
“As an investment institution operating
as a sovereign wealth fund, the FSDEA seeks
to secure long-term sustainable financial
returns that will positively impact the lives of
the people of Angola now and in the future.”
José Filomeno de Sousa dos Santos,
who attended the FSDEA’s launch, which
received international media coverage
from outlets including the New York Times
and CNN, said: “The launch of the FSDEA
is a historic moment for Angola, as the
government continues to transform and grow
the country’s economy.
“The FSDEA recognises that there
are still considerable challenges facing the
country. However, we are committed to
promoting social and economic development
by investing in projects that create
opportunities which will positively impact
the lives of all Angolans today and generate
wealth for future generations.”
He added, in a subsequent interview,
that the FSDEA would be paying particular
attention to emerging economies, especially
those in Asia. “We will be looking at emerging
economies as a very interesting target
because we believe that returns there are
very attractive. Going forward, in terms of
investments, we would look to always hire
the best investment capacity possible, and
Asia has a lot of potential.”
News of the FSDEA’s launch has
excited global markets and boosted Angola’s
already growing reputation as an African
economic powerhouse.
In a statement, global ratings agency
Fitch, which in May upgraded Angola from
BB- to BB+, said: “Angola’s decision to set up
a sovereign wealth fund is positive news. It
reaffirms our view that government policies
are reducing the economy’s exposure to
movements in the oil price, and laying a
foundation for sustainable growth.”
The agency noted that the FSDEA could
contribute to a further upgrade if it were
coupled with a longer track record of prudent
fiscal and monetary policy management, and
that if the fund led to better management and
utilisation of windfall oil revenues it could
boost long-term GDP growth.
Although President dos Santos will
be ultimately responsible for deciding
investment policies, the FSDEA’s board is fully
autonomous and will oversee its own activities.
The FSDEA will also have a separate
fiscal council to ensure that all laws and
regulations are being followed and will be
subject to annual and independent audits.
For further oversight, a four-member
advisory board will be set up consisting of the
Minister of Finance, Carlos Alberto Lopes,
the Minister of Economy, Abrahão Pio dos
Santos Gourgel, the Minister of Planning and
Territorial Development, Job Graça, and the
governor of Banco Nacional de Angola, José
de Lima Massano.
Transparency has been placed at
the heart of the FSDEA, which will be run
according to the internationally-recognised
Santiago Principles, a code of conduct
developed by the International Working
Group of Sovereign Wealth Funds.
The principles are based on maintaining
a stable global financial system and the free
flow of capital and investment; compliance
with applicable regulatory and disclosure
requirements in the countries where
investments are made; making investments
based on return-related considerations; and
ensuring a sound governance structure that
provides for adequate operational controls,
risk management and accountability.
As well as investing outside Angola in
high-return long-yield funds, the FSDEA
will also spend money closer to home
to help support the country’s ongoing
infrastructure needs in areas such as
agriculture, water, power generation
and transport.
The FSDEA has also identified the need
to help promote Angola as a destination for
overseas investment. At the sovereign wealth
fund’s launch, it was announced there would
be a focus on the hospitality sector in a bid to
create more hotel capacity and improve the
skills of local labour in the industry.
There is a longer-term plan to create an
Angolan hotel school which the FSDEA hopes
will one day become the leading hospitality
establishment on the African continent.
13
04
02
08
18
09
17
12
06
01
02
05
06
07
08
Country
Sovereign wealth fund name
Libya
Libyan Investment Authority
Algeria
Botswana
Nigeria
Gabon
Mauritania
Revenue Regulation Fund
Pula Fund
Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority
Gabon Sovereign Wealth Fund
National Fund for Hydrocarbon Reserves
Equatorial Guinea Fund for Future Generations
Source: SWF Institute
09
Assets $bn
Inception
Origin
65.0
2006
Oil
56.7
6.9
1.0
0.4
0.3
0.08
2000
1994
2011
1998
2006
2002
Oil
Diamonds & minerals
Oil
Oil
Oil & gas
Oil
15
01
03
04
Africa sovereign wealth funds
16
07
03
For more information about the FSDEA go to
www.fundosoberano.ao p
05
14
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
11
Australia.....................................................................................................The Future Fund
Azerbaijan................................................... State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan
Botswana..............................................................................................................Pula Fund
Canada..................................................................... Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund
China.................................................................................. China Investment Corporation
Gabon................................................................................. Gabon Sovereign Wealth Fund
Equatorial Guinea..................................................................Fund for Future Generations
Korea.................................................................................. Korea Investment Corporation
Kuwait................................................................................... Kuwait Investment Authority
Libya....................................................................................... Libyan Investment Authority
New Zealand..............................................................New Zealand Superannuation Fund
Nigeria...............................................................Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority
Norway......................................................................... Government Pension Fund-Global
Qatar.........................................................................................Qatar Investment Authority
East Timor.............................................................................Timor-Leste Petroleum Fund
Singapore....................................................................................Temasek Holding Pte Ltd
United Arab Emirates......................................................Abu Dhabi Investment Authority
United States................................................................................ Alaska Permanent Fund
DECEMBER 2012 31
KINGDOM
OF THE WILD
FRONTIERS
One of the largest conservation areas in the world is taking shape
in Angola’s southeastern region. Universo eyes the developments
By Lula Ahrens
Wildebeest make a leap of faith
DECEMBER 2012 33
Paul Banton
ENVIRONMENT
project’s starting point in Angola. From
there, it crosses the border to Botswana
and continues towards Botswana’s
Okavango Delta.
“The vast wilderness of Angola’s Luiana
and Luenge national parks and adjacent
areas with near-pristine wildlife habitats
offers unexploited tourism development
potential,” Kaza director Dr Victor
Siamudaala told Universo when asked to
name Angola’s most vital contribution to
the project, adding that “Angola’s unique
culture and cuisine, too, are particularly
attractive to tourists.”
Kaza was officially launched in March
2012 at the Namibian town of Katima
Mulilo. The project is jointly administered
by the governments of the five partner
countries and is supported by various
international donors. The co-ordinating
role of Kaza rotates biannually between
the five nations.
“For five countries to come together
and decide to mutually conserve their
natural resources in a sustainable way and
benefit local communities and eventually
reduce rural poverty is truly admirable,”
said Dr Siamudaala.
Official birth
Elephants
The first steps of the Kaza project date
back to the 1990s, with the establishment
of the Okavango Upper Zambezi Tourism
Initiative funded through the South African
Development Community. The project
failed to take off and was succeeded by
others, until the foundation stone of the
current Kaza scheme was laid in December
2006 when the five member countries
signed a memorandum of understanding.
Its formal establishment took place in
August 2011 when the leaders of Angola,
Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe
signed the Kaza Treaty in Luanda, at the
closing ceremony of the 31st SADC (Southern
African Development Community) Summit.
One of the most spectacular aspects of
the Kaza project is that it will harbour
the largest contiguous population of the
African elephant (around 250,000) on the
continent. Southern Africa’s elephants
face two important issues: poaching –
they are much sought after for their ivory
– and overpopulation in areas where they
infringe on farmland.
Botswana drew up a plan in 1990, which
put the maximum number of elephants
the country could handle at 60,000. But
because culling was controversial and
Botswana wanted to avoid international
condemnation, it allowed numbers to grow.
There are now some 150,000 elephants
in Botswana, which are in dire need of
an alternative habitat. Zambia, and in
particular the Angolan province of Kuando
Kubango, offer a way of diluting these
populations through Kaza ‘transfrontier
corridors’ or protected tracts of land.
Angola’s 199,049sq km Kuando
Kubango province will make up a major
portion of the reserve. After four decades
of independence and civil war, which
ended in 2002, it had only around 140,000
people living there. The conflict took a
heavy toll on the province’s wildlife, as
elephant ivory was sold to buy weapons
and other wild animals served as food
for soldiers and farmers. Now Kaza offers
Kuando Kubango a promising new future.
With its continuing landmine clearance
campaigns, the province could provide a
vast new home for Botswana’s superfluous
elephant population.
“For five countries to come together
and decide to mutually conserve
their natural resources in a
sustainable way and benefit local
communities and eventually reduce
rural poverty is truly admirable”
– Dr Victor Siamudaala
Simon Greig
T
he Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area
(Kaza) is an extraordinary
intergovernmental effort to
create a wildlife park across huge swathes
of land where Angola, Botswana, Namibia,
Zambia and Zimbabwe converge.
The aim is to protect the biodiversity
and culture in this corner of southern
Africa without regard to borders.
Angola owns the second-biggest slice
of the proposed protected area, which at
444,000sq km is the size of Sweden. Kaza is
named after the two largest river systems
that drain the region, the Okavango
and Zambezi. The area is home to the
world’s biggest elephant population and a
wealth of other endangered plant and
animal species.
The project is not only about the welfare
of the flora and fauna. Kaza member
countries are expecting an explosion of
tourism in the area, which will hopefully
boost socio-economic development and
conserve local cultures.
Angola is responsible for the secondlargest section of the area, some
90,000sq km. This covers the Luiana Partial
Reserve, the Mavinga Partial Reserve, and
the Longa-Mavinga, Luengue, Luiana and
Mucusso hunting areas.
Kuando Kubango province forms the
Mark Clydesdale BZO
ENVIRONMENT
wollemipine
Eland antelope, a native of the Okavango region
DECEMBER 2012 35
Okavango-Zambezi: home to the nomadic Khoisan
ENVIRONMENT
The Khoisan
Cultural treasures
Kuando Kubango province is also home to
Angola’s Khoisan community, descendants
of Sub-Saharan Africa’s first inhabitants,
often referred to as ‘Bushmen.’ They offer
a prime example of the cultural wealth the
Kaza area holds.
Right in the middle of the Namibe
Desert lies a large area with Khoisan cave
paintings, some of which can be traced
back to the Stone Age. They are considered
among Angola’s most beautiful prehistoric
collections of cave art.
Sadly, the Khoisan are at risk of
extinction. Only a few populations still
survive in southwest Africa. Recent
estimates show that of the 100,000 Khoisan
left on the African continent, barely 5,000
live in southern Angola.
In Angola the Khoisan are supported
by the Association for Environmental
Conservation and Integrated Development
(Acadir) and are funded by USAID, the US
Agency for International Development,
which focuses on family income, water
supply and the sustainable management
of natural resources.
Acadir projects cover the municipalities
of Cuangar, Calai, Dirico, Menongue
and Savate in Kuando Kubango. The
organisation aims to improve the often
marginalised Khoisan communities’
access to housing, drinking water,
education and legal documentation as well
as tackling poaching and deforestation. At
least 725 Koishan have reportedly already
benefited from these efforts through
donations of cattle, ploughs and seeds.
The Khoisan are not the only community
receiving ongoing support. It is estimated
that up to 2.5 million people live within
the Kaza area. The partner countries want
these communities to benefit directly from
the Kaza initiative, even if the number one
objective is saving the plant and wildlife.
“The Kaza area is not aimed
at exploiting any given culture or
community,” said Dr Siamudaala. Quite
the contrary: “It provides a platform for
communities to benefit from tourism.”
Many other communities in the Kaza
area, apart from the Khoisan, tend to
be vulnerable, suffering higher levels of
poverty, illiteracy, underdevelopment
and declining agricultural productivity.
As a result, they inadvertently place a
great strain on the sustainability of their
natural resources.
Kaza efforts focus on ending
community conflicts with wild animals,
which sometimes damage cultivated land
during their migrations, resulting in loss
of livelihoods and sometimes even in the
killing of humans.
According to Kaza, tourist development
can provide these communities with
alternative sources of income. Kaza acts
as a watchdog for community rights and
management of natural resources and
their agreements with the private sector.
Kaza also oversees their generation of
income from development projects. All of
this helps the partner countries’ efforts in
reaching their United Nations Millennium
Development Goals.
Kaza efforts focus on ending
community conflicts with wild animals,
which sometimes damage cultivated
land during their migrations, resulting in
loss of livelihoods and sometimes
even in the killing of humans
More information
If you would like more visual information on what the Kaza project entails, watch the award-winning documentary
Creating a Climate for Change. This 35-minute film on the impact of climate change in southern Africa was cofunded by the Open Society Initiative for southern Africa and first shown at the UN Convention on Climate Change
in Durban in 2011. It illustrates how locally-driven solutions can be devised and successfully implemented in
some of the worst affected areas, and devotes quite some time to the Kaza area project.
DECEMBER 2012 37
Eric Lafforgue
www.kavangozambezi.org
ENVIRONMENT
Okavango delta
An African leopard lounges in a tree
Portrait of a waterbuck
A hippo at sunset
Natural wealth
elephant, leopard, rhino, buffalo and lion.
Other rare, vulnerable and endangered
wildlife species in the area include the
cheetah, black rhino, African wild dog,
sable and roan antelope, puku, oribi,
honey badger and wattled crane.
The cape vulture, major populations
of buffalo, hippo, lechwe, eland, zebra,
wildebeest, waterbuck and bushbuck can
also be spotted in the area, as can the
sitatunga, hunting dog, spotted hyena, and
numerous other southern African animal
species. White rhino may be found in small
numbers in the Okavango Delta area.
Kaza also boasts at least 3,000 plant
species, 600 southern African bird species,
2,645 flora species, 128 species of reptiles, 50
species of amphibians, almost 300 butterfly
species and a great variety of sea mammals.
Tourist magnet
Not surprisingly, given OkavangoZambezi’s many assets, the region is set to
be southern Africa’s top tourist destination.
Ecotourists can indulge in discovering the
region’s plants, trees and wildlife. Kaza’s
tremendous diversity of ethnic groups
along with the promotion of indigenous
knowledge, and the establishment of
cultural villages and national heritage
sites, will no doubt entice cultural tourists
as well.
Numerous lodges and camping sites
already exist across Kaza, mostly along the
Okavango and Zambezi rivers. New tourist
accommodation will be built, especially
in south-east Angola (including Kuando
Kubango) and western Zambia. The
Angolan Ministry of Hotels and Tourism
has already given the go-ahead for
accommodation work in Kuando Kubango.
Dr Siamudaala told Universo that
the Kaza countries are streamlining their
visa requirements for the region. “Where
possible, they will develop a tourist visa
system limited to the Kaza area in order to
allow for seamless travel of tourists within
the area,” he said. p
DECEMBER 2012 39
EcoPrint
Gerrit de Vries
The total Kaza area will include 36 national
parks, game reserves and community
conservation areas. It boasts stunning tourist
attractions such as the Okavango Delta
in Botswana, which is the largest Ramsar
(wetland of international importance) site
in the world.
It is home to the Victoria Falls on the
Zambezi River between Zimbabwe and
Zambia, a UNESCO World Heritage site
and one of the seven natural wonders of
the world. Kaza encompasses one of the
world’s largest salt flats, the Makgadikgadi
Pans in Botswana, covering an area
almost the size of Portugal, in the midst
of desert, and Lake Kariba in Zambia and
Zimbabwe, the world’s largest artificial
lake. In addition, the region comprises
various types of woodland, grassland and
wetlands, supporting its high biodiversity.
Elephants are not the only ones who
will profit from the wildlife corridors. Kaza
is home to Africa’s charismatic Big Five:
Jiri Haureljuk
Leslie Crookes
ENVIRONMENT
D
L
O
G
TRIKES
S
M
A
E
T
S
IC
P
M
Y
L
PARA
A
Members of Angola’s Paralympics squad received a warm welcome in
Luanda on their return from London 2012. Team talisman José Armando
Sayovo stunned the competition with a majestic display
ngola’s national Paralympics
team returned to Luanda
from the 2012 Paralympics
in September, bringing the
nation the present of a memorable gold
medal win by charismatic blind athlete
José Armando Sayovo.
Sayovo won gold in the 400-metre
distance race and followed this up with
a bronze medal in the 200 metres for
visually-impaired athletes (class T11)
in the Games held in London between
August 29 and September 9. Remarkably,
he also narrowly missed out on another
bronze medal in the 100 metres, having
to settle for fourth place.
“The Olympics are the highest point
in the career of an athlete. Fortunately I
reached this point in the competition,”
said Sayovo.
The other runners making up Angola’s
Paralympic contingent – Octávio dos
Santos, Esperança Gicasso and Maria da
Silva – fell short of medal places but gave
good accounts of themselves, surpassing
personal records during the competition.
Sayovo told the Angolan press that a
memorable highlight of the trip was the
support he received from the Angolan
fans when he entered the Olympic
Stadium in London.
SPORT
Track record
Sayovo’s triumph was the athlete’s
third consecutive appearance at
the Games. His total tally is now
eight medals and record times in
the 100, 200 and 400 metres won
during the last three Paralympics.
What makes Sayovo’s achievement
in London even more impressive
is the fact that the man from
Catabola, Bié province, is now a
40-year old veteran athlete.
Sayovo currently leads the world
Paralympic ranking in the 200 metres and
400 metres for visually-impaired athletes,
according to the International Paralympic
Committee. In the 400-metres category,
Sayovo tops the list of 30 athletes with a
time of 50.75 seconds, while he shares a
time of 22.84 seconds with Brazil’s Daniel
Silva in the 200 metres.
Sayovo was awarded a prize of
two million kwanzas ($20,951) by the
Angolan Ministry of Youth and Sport in
recognition of his feat. Sports Minister
Gonçalves Manuel Muandumba said
Sayovo was one of Angola’s greatest
sportsmen and a symbol of Angolan sport
who continued to raise the country and
its flag beyond its borders.
Deputy Sports Minister Albino José
da Conceição said that Paralympic sport
was a living example of the government’s
investment in its social-inclusion policy.
José Sayovo “makes us feel citizens of the
world with his achievements”, he added.
Sayovo’s future
The Angolan Paralympic Committee has
put forward Sayovo’s name to the United
Nations for a possible role as a ‘good-will
ambassador’ in promoting the cause of
the disabled.
The next Paralympic Games will be
held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The big
question for Angolans is: will Sayovo be
there? Nobody is betting against another
Sayovo appearance at the age of 44; after
all, he surprised almost everyone by his
success this time around. p
DECEMBER 2012 41
Sonangol news briefing
ZEE latest
Sonangol and
Maersk oil find
Rio Oil and
Gas Expo
■ Sonangol participated in the giant Rio Oil and Gas Expo and
conference held in Rio de Janeiro in September. More than 500
exhibitors were present at the Riocentro Exhibition & Convention
centre located in the western district of Barra da Tijuca, the
planned site of Brazil’s 2016 Olympic Games.
The main theme of the Sonangol stand was the
internationalisation of the company’s operations, so subsidiary
Sonangol Starfish Oil & Gas was the focus of attention. Joaquim
Leite da Costa, president of Sonangol Starfish, said the event
surpassed expectations and gave greater exposure to Starfish,
and was also an excellent opportunity for promoting Sonangol
around the world.
James Jones Jr
■ Two more industrial units have been
added to the Sonangol-supported special
economic zone (ZEE) in the Viana-Bengo.
One unit, Indústria de Ferragens Lda, will
manufacture 95,000 security locks of four
different types and employ 102 workers.
The second unit will produce galvanised
products and have a staff of 29.
The total number of enterprises now
operating in the zone stands at 17 with
a total workforce of 3,000. Another nine
units are expected to start up by the end
of this year. The scheme’s target is to
have 53 units fully operational by 2014.
in Block 16 (Cabinda) in early October. The deepwater Caporolo-1 well showed
a flow of up to 3,000 barrels per day in tests. “It’s the second discovery made in
this block after Chissonga-1. The Caporolo-1 well was drilled at a sea depth of
1,235 metres and reached a total depth of 5,508 metres,” said Sonangol. Maersk
is the block operator and has a 65% stake, while Sonangol P&P owns 20% and
Brazil’s Odebrecht Oil & Gas Angola has the remaining 15%. Sonangol E.P. is the
concession holder.
Sonangol Starfish
returns Brazil block
■ Sonangol Starfish Oil & Gas and OGX Petróleo have returned their
licences to drill in two shallow offshore blocks to Brazil’s National
Petroleum Agency (ANP). The blocks in the Santos Basin were
deemed not as productive as the ones in deeper water. Sonangol
Starfish returned its stake in Block BM-S-60 after a long drilling
campaign that proved three times more expensive than estimated.
Oil and gas were found but not in commercial quantities. Sonangol
Starfish now aims to concentrate its efforts in north-east Brazil in
the Potiguar (Rio Grande do Norte) and Recôncavo (Bahia) basins,
according to Brazilian oil website Macaé Offshore.
New fuel depot at
Kuando Kubango
Malocha
■ Sonangol E.P. and partner Maersk Oil Angola announced another oil discovery
■ Oil Minister José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos inaugurated
a new Sonangol fuel depot in Kuando Kubango province on
August 25. He was accompanied by Sonangol E.P. board
president Francisco Maria and other board members.
Sonangol’s latest addition to its supply network will benefit
provincial capital Menongue and other municipalities in the
fast-developing region of south-east Angola.
The fuel depot has storage capacity of 4,500 cubic metres,
made up of 2,000m3 of diesel, 1,000m3 of petrol and 1,500m3
of aviation fuel. The facility also has storage space for 200
metric tonnes of LPG, enough to fill 4,000 12kg canisters a day.
Sonangol grants Team Schlesser
500 scholarships denied World Cup win
■ Sonangol E.P. has made 500 scholarships available for
degree studies abroad for courses in geosciences, engineering
and technology as well as applied social sciences. The
objective is to meet the future needs of Angola’s oil industry
for qualified personnel. Angola’s Higher Polytechnic Institute
of Science and Technology (ISPTEC) will manage the selection
process of candidates.
■ Team Sonangol Schlesser recorded another win in the twowheel-drive category race in the Baja Poland cross-country rally
championship in early September. However, a few weeks later
with the title within its grasp, the team failed to win the World Cup
2WD in the Pharaons Rally held in Egypt from September 29 to
October 6. Team Sonangol Schlesser was disqualified from the
rally on a technical irregularity because an air-intake duct was
deemed slightly too large.
DECEMBER 2012 43
LONDON
REGENERATION
SONANGOL LTD TURNS THIRTY
Tony Hill
As London-based Sonangol Ltd approaches its 30th anniversary in February 2013, Universo
looks at its crucial role in marketing Angola’s oil and the aspirations of new CEO Sandra Júlio
S
onangol’s light, tastefullydecorated offices, tucked away in
a side street in the shadow of the
world-famous Harrods department
store in London’s West End, have seen
huge changes over the past three decades
in the company and in Angola’s fortunes.
When Sonangol Ltd was established in
1983, it represented a largely unheard-of
company in world oil markets. It traded
low volumes of oil for low prices from a
country little-known but for conflict.
Today, Angola is in its tenth year of
peace, enjoys an upbeat economy with high
growth rates and has raised its oil output
tenfold. Sonangol’s London team deserves
particular credit for making a significant
contribution to improving the reputation
of the company and the country.
“Sonangol Ltd is the front office of
Sonangol E.P.,” says trading and marketing
manager, Luis Neves, who has been in the
London office for eight years out of his
14-year Sonangol career. He took on his
present position in January 2012.
Neves says his job title is a little
misleading, as his role has more to do with
marketing than with trading. Marketing is
the core activity of Sonangol Ltd.
But, the London office’s functions also
go some way beyond this.
“We publicise Angola’s image and
we’re proud of our 30 years here. Sonangol
is seen as a good brand. Everybody knows
it now. We’re proud to be Angolan and
African,” he enthuses.
Another role the London office
performs, says Neves, includes facilitating
investment. Sonangol’s creditworthiness
helps financial institutions view Angola
and Angolan companies more positively.
This has proved especially important for
the nation’s economy. It has enabled Angola
to be seen as a country where one can do
business and also find trustworthy partners.
Sonangol Ltd’s finance manager,
Pankaj Agarwala, a 16-year veteran in
the London office, agrees. “The office
has played a huge role and has had a
great impact on Sonangol as a whole
and on Angola, as oil was, and still is, its
main source of earnings. Sonangol never
defaults on loans, and this has given the
company and Angola reputational gains.”
Neves also represents Sonangol on
OPEC’s economics commission, giving
further evidence of the company’s
improved international profile.
“It’s an honour and it gives Angola
more impact abroad,” he explains.
According to Neves, the challenges
ahead for marketing Sonangol’s oil will be
in the decline of purchases by what was
previously its largest client, the United
States. While China is now Angola’s largest
client and the US is in second place, the
latter’s likely self-sufficiency by 2030 could
dent international sales and hit oil prices.
In preparation for this, Angola must seek
alternative markets, he says.
How Sonangol’s
trading operations work
Two months before Sonangol sells its crude
oil, representatives of its offices meet and
decide upon the likely volume available
and their pricing strategy. A programme
is then produced with the prices, the
different oil ‘streams’ or oil quality types
for sale, and which of Angola’s terminals
will be used for loading. Approximate time
slots for the vessel to start the operation are
also given.
The role of the London, Singapore and
Houston offices is to oversee the contract
and the loading operation.
Once a purchase has been agreed,
the operator works out contract details:
the designation of a vessel for loading,
documentation, letters of credit and
demurrage details (penalties for delays).
Payment for the oil is due after 30 days.
It is up to the buyer to find and lease
a vessel to collect the cargo on an agreed
date. This can sometimes prove tricky as
crude tankers may be two to three weeks’
sailing time away from Angola and have
to be able to reach the terminals in time.
Tankers are costly to run, and failure to
meet a time slot can result in a hefty delay
fee for the buyer.
Each million-barrel cargo usually
takes around 24 hours to load. The oil is
sold for delivery on a schedule based on
an almost constant flow of oil through
Sonangol’s 15 terminals.
If Sonangol fails to honour the loading
time slot, then it may be hit by a contractual
demurrage fee. Sonangol’s role now is to
make sure the loading facility operates
promptly, efficiently and has space for
other loadings.
One operator skill is in matching the
buyer to a delivery date. The trader must
try to get the best possible price for the
oil. Market knowledge and experience is
essential as buyers are offered oil from
many producers and new fields in the
same region, so Angola must compete.
Angola has the advantage of geography
for its shipping operations, as it is on
the main route from the Middle East to
Europe. Here an empty tanker may often
be available on its return to the Gulf. This
can then be leased to pick up a lucrative
return cargo, known as ‘backhaul’. The
‘Sonangol is seen as a good brand;
everybody knows it’ – Luis Neves
DECEMBER 2012 45
Luis Neves: Trading & Marketing Manager
Sonangol Ltd values
Customer satisfaction
Performance
Effective communication
Team working
Ethical conduct
Respect for diversity
Quality, Health, Safety
& Environment (QHSE)
Some company history
Former managing director José Carlos de
Castro Paiva played a key role in developing
Sonangol Ltd over nearly 30 years until his
retirement at the beginning of 2012.
Paiva says he faced three major
challenges on taking up his post, the
‘terrible trio’ of low oil production, low
prices and war. The company has left each
of these negative factors far behind.
Paiva remembers early days at
Sonangol Ltd when traded volumes were
relatively low and a barrel of oil fetched a
mere $6.70. Angola is now a medium-sized
producer and oil is currently hovering
above $105 a barrel, having peaked at $145
in 2008.
One of Paiva’s proudest achievements
was his contribution to helping soothe the
Angolan government’s financial problems
during the heroic period of the country’s
resistance to the military onslaught of
apartheid South Africa. “We did contribute
to keeping the country’s economy alive,”
he remembers.
Based on oil revenues, Sonangol was
able to raise finance on London money
markets from a figure of $200 million at
the beginning to $2 billion some years
later for the government’s treasury. “They
were tremendous deals and achievements
Sandra Júlio
Sandra Júlio is a senior crude oil and LPG marketer at
Sonangol. She started working for Sonangol in 1996 as
a systems analyst, after graduating in Computer Science
at the University of Salford near Manchester. In 1997 she
was invited to work at Sonangol USA in Houston, Texas,
as a network administrator and assistant to the crude oil
operations manager. Before joining the team in Houston,
she participated on a training programme with Citizens
Resources in Boston, Coastal in Houston and Equator
Bank in Connecticut.
While working at Sonangol USA she was involved
in various projects, created the first Sonangol crude oil
operations database, and was involved in setting up the
new HQ in Houston. In 2003 she moved to London to work
for the crude oil operations department. In 2005, when
Sanha LPG started production, the company appointed
her to be part of the LPG marketing joint venture team
at Chevron to get experience in the business. After two
years she returned to Sonangol and helped establish
the LPG sector at the trading department, and started
marketing Angolan crude and LPG. She also participated
in a training programme for traders with BP and came
out as the top trainee. Sandra Júlio became the first
Angolan female trader inside Sonangol.
As a crude oil and LPG trader, she has been involved
in various marketing projects, contracts negotiations,
setting up the new gas department inside the company,
marketing crude oil and LPG cargoes and training new
employees to develop knowledge in marketing crude oil
and gas.
In January 2012 Sandra Júlio was appointed
president and chief executive of Sonangol Ltd.
Adrian Safranek
tanker could then take Angolan oil to a
Far East customer and thus be closer to its
destination port, having earned an extra
fee on its way home.
Sonangol Ltd’s four-strong operations
team is led by Uíge-born manager
Solange Verdade. Verdade has been in
the oil industry for over 20 years, having
previously worked at Elf Aquitaine and
Sonangol’s US operations in Houston.
Verdade says her role is to make sure crude
loadings and discharge operations (of
refined products) run smoothly.
The main types of problems the
operations team have to deal with are
late vessel arrivals, low inventories and
mechanical failures.
“You have to be organised and active,
and be able to anticipate problems and
respond quickly,” she explains. “Touch
wood, there have been no big incidents.”
Sonangol’s offices in London, Houston
and Singapore ensure operations are
overseen 24-hours a day, seven days
a week. Operations teams are always
vigilant. “The task needs continuity, so
we don’t take all our annual leave in
one go. You can’t be offline too long,”
says Verdade.
Verdade’s British-born deputy, Stephen
Booth, has been with Sonangol for 12 years
and has a background in shipping design
and cargo inspection. He notes that Angola’s
expanding oil output has meant there are
now more cargoes to keep an eye on.
Another member of Verdade’s team is
operations coordinator Jorge Assis, who
hails from Benguela.
Assis started his career with Total
working as an offshore manager, optimising
production and logistics and ensuring safety.
“We make sure the contract is observed
correctly, protect Angola’s interests and
oversee the terminal-customer interface
and check that payment is made on the
due date,” he explains.
In his offshore days, Assis was involved
directly with much larger numbers of staff,
as many as 500, but now works in an office
with fewer than 30.
“The dimensions are smaller, but it’s of
much bigger importance for the company,”
he says with a smile.
Sandra Júlio: President & CEO
‘We want Sonangol to be
internationally recognised as a
successful and reputable oil and gas
trading and marketing company’
Solange Verdade: Operations Manager
– Sandra Júlio
DECEMBER 2012 47
& GAS
Sonangol newsOIL
briefing
OIL & GAS
as it was incredibly difficult to get finance
then,” he recalls.
Another source of pride for Paiva
has been the growth of Sonangol Ltd’s
reputation for professionalism and
transparency. It has always repaid its
London bankers, and they helped spread
the word about Angola’s creditworthiness.
The financial markets’ confidence
in Angola has risen exponentially and it
enjoys much more favourable interest
rates as its high-risk rating has long
since declined.
The company today is now one of Africa’s
outstanding oil producers. “Sonangol has no
African comparison. The market says that,”
Paiva points out enthusiastically.
José Paiva: former Managing Director
Pankaj Agarwala: Finance Manager
Building a legacy
One of Sonangol Ltd’s ingredients to its
success has been the slow turnover of staff,
a sure sign of employee satisfaction. Paiva,
Ceri Evans and recently-retired trader
Andy Whitrow have clocked up more than
a quarter of a century each at the office,
and several younger members of staff are
already into their second decade.
A contented workforce generates
dividends at the client interface. Customers
are always happy to deal with the same
people as it helps build the trust involved
in any long-term relationship. Getting
the right people for the job on board in
the first place, and then keeping them,
has been very important for building the
company’s reputation.
Supply and logistics manager Ceri
Evans, who joined Sonangol’s London
operations in May 1983, describes his oilselling task simply as “turning brown stuff
into green stuff”.
He brought a wealth of experience
to the office, having worked for BP for 14
years, ten of those on the marketing side.
Evans believes the most important
company legacy built up over the past 30
years, apart from selling as much oil as
possible, is its culture of client care.
“We look after clients; we recognise the
value of term relationships, behave as a
major and follow a deal to the letter. We’re
considerate and flexible in approach but
don’t lose focus on the process,” he explains.
“Clients talk to the same people in the
office, know their first names, and these
people do what they say they will do, and that
builds trust and gives an element of stability in
the relationship.”
Evans also believes the best preparation
for Sonangol Ltd’s future is to make
sure that it loses none of the knowledge
acquired over the past decades.
Looking to the future
The London office is now undergoing a
period of transition as a new chief executive
takes her place at its head and Sonangol Ltd
comes under the responsibility of Sonaci.
Sandra Júlio was appointed president
and chief executive of Sonangol Ltd at the
beginning of 2012, succeeding the longserving José Paiva.
A tribute to the cohesion at the London
office is that Júlio herself was promoted
through the ranks of that office.
Júlio won a scholarship and joined a
Sonangol training scheme in 1991. She
studied Computer Science at Salford
University and also spent one year at
accountants Coopers & Lybrand’s Lisbon
office. Júlio was one of the four pioneers
to open Sonangol’s Houston office in 1997.
Her move to the company’s London
office came in 2003 on a rotation
‘Sonangol has become one
of Africa’s outstanding
oil companies’
Ceri Evans: Supply & Logistics Manager
– José Paiva
Why London?
London was the obvious first-choice site for Sonangol’s
first major overseas office. It is the world’s largest oil
trading market and a leading financial centre where
banks could be easily contacted to arrange credit for
its oil sales.
The city is also home to the world’s largest shipping
and insurance market and so plays an important role in
providing cover for oil tankers and oil operations.
In the early 1980s, around 85 per cent of Angola’s
oil sales were to the United States, but most of
these companies bought their oil via their London
branch offices.
An added advantage for Sonangol is that the
UK is in the same time zone as Luanda, so its
daily operations fit in well with the working day of
Sonangol’s head office.
For 14 years London was Sonangol’s only overseas
office. In 1997, as Angola’s oil production increased,
Sonangol USA was founded and opened offices in
Houston, Texas. This office was tasked with handling
new clients in the region.
Sonangol opened a Singapore office in 2003 to cater
for customers in the fast-expanding Far East markets,
especially China and India.
There has been a marked shift in Angola’s oil
markets: Demand in the United States is falling, China
has become Angola’s largest single customer, and
Angola is China’s leading supplier.
Sonangol Ltd in London and its sister offices in
Singapore and Houston have a mutually beneficial
relationship. Each provides operational advantages to
the others as they share their workload. Individual oil
operations enjoy round-the-clock support as the three
offices can serve them through three major time zones.
The offices have a flexible and informal relationship
with each other and between sellers and buyers, so no
one office assumes a geographic territory.
The workload of supporting contracts is fairly divided
between the three offices. Sonangol sells approximately
27 individual one million barrel-loads of oil a month, so
each overseas offices handles roughly nine loads a month.
Since October there has been an organisational
reshuffle at Sonangol, and the three international offices
are now under the umbrella directorship of Sonangol
Comercialização Internacional (Sonaci) headed by Ruth
da Costa David.
Quality coordination
Kevin Stearns, Sonangol Ltd’s office manager is a former
British soldier, and in his 15 years of service he was involved
in logistics operations. Stearns brings to the company a
mind-set of tight process discipline and observance that is
an essential ingredient for operational success.
Since London gained ‘sister offices’ in Houston
and Singapore, process uniformity in quality and
implementation has become even more important as the
three offices cooperate continuously. There are hand-overs
when overseeing individual ship loadings as part of their
24-hour service provision.
In order to attain service
uniformity, Stearns has
been heavily involved in
implementing a programme
of ISO certification. The aim
of certification is continuous
service improvement, and the
three offices are encouraged to
audit each other’s compliance
with process schedules to
attain this goal.
Sonangol Ltd gained
its first ISO certification
in 2009 and is currently
in the process of recertification
and upgrading to even
higher standards.
Kevin Stearns: Office Manager
DECEMBER 2012 49
Sonangol Limited
Sonangol’s consumers
06
05
07
08
04
09
03
10
11
12
02
13
14
01
China..................................... 50.86
02
India......................................... 8.77
03
Taiwan..................................... 5.10
04
US East Coast......................... 4.53
05
US Gulf Coast......................... 4.50
06
South Africa............................ 4.11
07
Angola..................................... 3.45
08
US West Coast........................ 2.91
09
UK............................................ 2.81
10
Portugal................................... 2.75
11
Canada.................................... 2.72
12
Spain........................................ 2.71
13
Italy.......................................... 1.07
14
Peru......................................... 1.00
15
France...................................... 0.68
16
Holland.................................... 0.68
17
US Atlantic Coast................... 0.67
18
Sweden.................................... 0.35
19
Thailand................................... 0.32
15
16
17
18
19
01
Jorge Assis: Operations Coordinator
programme. Júlio later spent two more
years working in Chevron when the
innovative Sanha liquefied petroleum gas
project started up, this time for Chevron
as an LPG trader. Sanha, off the coast of
Cabinda, was the world’s first dedicated
floating LPG production, storage and
offloading (FPSO) facility.
Júlio returned to Sonangol’s London
office in 2007 when she was appointed
crude oil and LPG trader.
Sonangol Ltd’s environment has
changed markedly since its foundation
30 years ago and there are new challenges
ahead for the youthful Júlio as she leads the
company’s largest overseas office forward.
Júlio says it is a big advantage to have
known Sonangol Ltd well before taking
office as its chief executive. However, she
is conscious that the company will have
to face increasingly strong competition in
the future.
“So we have to keep up and improve
our portfolio of clients, offer better services
and be proactive,” she says.
“Previously, Angola just sold its oil
assets. Now we want to trade other grades,
increase the volume of trading activity, not
only of Angolan oil grades but also other
non-Angolan grades”.
The result of this will be to have a larger
portfolio of oil grades to offer clients.
She points out that there is no problem
with Angola’s current grades as refiners are
more flexible, especially China and India,
which have a broad range of refineries.
There is a good demand for Angolan grades.
A Sonangol sea-change in recent years
has been the shift away from selling to
North American markets, which used to
take over 70 per cent of Angola’s oil, to
China as its main client.
The US is seen as a declining oil-import
market and one of Angola’s challenges is
to compete for new markets to replace it.
Júlio is adamant that London’s
Sonangol Limited
President
& CEO
Merevale House,
Brompton Place,
London SW3 1QE
Sonacare
Trading
Department
Operations
Department
Finance
Department
Administration
Department
‘International oil and gas trading
will invigorate Sonangol’s
marketing activity’
– Sandra Júlio
primacy as a location for Sonangol
Ltd is unlikely to be challenged in the
near future.
“It’s an important office and the
first overseas office of Sonangol. We’ve
been here since 1983. London is the
world’s largest oil trading hub and a
leading financial and business centre.
We’re in the same time zone as Luanda
and we’re central. We’re also near our
banks, financial institutions and clients,
since most trading companies have
www.sonangol.co.ao
IT Department
representatives in London. I believe we
have better access to them in the UK. We
also have good professionals in-house.”
Sonangol Ltd has long been considered
the company’s front office and Angola’s
window on the world. This has proved
especially important for the country’s
economy. It has enabled Angola to be seen
as a country where one can do business and
also find trustworthy partners. It is now very
well respected, considered one of the best
African companies and a first-class supplier.
Supply & Logistics
Department
In the future, staff training, especially
of Angolans, is high up Júlio’s agenda. At
the moment she is the only Angolan female
that can trade oil and LPG.
Sonangol Ltd has only seven Angolans
out of its 27 employees. Júlio says
she would love to see more Angolans
gaining experience in the marketing and
trading business.
“I’d like to see more Angolans involved in
the crude-oil supply chain, from exploration
and production of crude oil to trading,
refining and retail markets,” she says.
With this in mind Sonangol Ltd, in
conjunction with Sonaci and Sonangol
associates, is preparing several exciting
training programmes for its new staff
including many Angolans.
“We also want to promote more
rotation among the Angolans working in
the trading units, so that they gain more
experience in other markets,” she explains.
Sonangol Ltd’s new chief executive
describes her mission as acting as an agent
for Sonaci to market and trade oil and gas
products while offering clients competitive
and value-maximising solutions.
“We want Sonangol to be internationally recognised as a successful
and reputable oil and gas trading and
marketing company,” she says.
All the signs indicate that Sandra Júlio,
backed by her highly-professional team,
should maintain Sonangol Ltd’s legacy
and the company’s good reputation for
professionalism and transparency. p
DECEMBER 2012 51

Universo - Sonangol EP

Transcription

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