Luanda, May 18, 2026 (Lusa) - "Opaque external funding", digital surveillance and information manipulation are contributing to the longevity of Angola’s government and to democratic erosion, a Friends of Angola (FoA) study has concluded.
According to the non-governmental organisation’s executive director and author of the research, Florindo Chivucute, the study focused on the “decline of the few remaining democratic pillars”, the “passage of Draconian laws” and the longevity of the government supported by the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has been in power since 1975.
For the author of “Promoting Authoritarianism – How China and Russia Undermine the Potential for Democracy in Angola”, digital surveillance is one of the factors strengthening the longevity of the government.
"Digital surveillance, cameras everywhere, especially in Luanda, and the manipulation of information, in my opinion, are behind the strengthening and longevity of kleptocratic or authoritarian governance and the erosion of democracy in Angola," he said.
He added that these mechanisms served as an external substitute for accountability, saying that the regime in Angola is actively working against its own people.
Speaking to Lusa on Monday, he argued that external funding in Angola had enriched only a very small faction of the population, primarily linked to the government, and reiterated that this financing is highly opaque.
"Through the opaque funding that the government has been receiving since the end of the civil war in 2002, through China (…), it has ended up creating an astronomical debt, but little or nothing is seen of what has been done with this money," he said.
He criticised parliament's lack of oversight regarding the government's actions, saying that parliamentary scrutiny was absent because external funding in the country only served to enrich a handful of individuals.
"The government doesn’t need [oversight] because it is receiving money from China without transparency, accountability, and that is enriching a handful of people, which is also used to maintain the system itself," he said.
He also emphasised that digital surveillance is one of the current government’s “priorities”, citing the use of “spyware” against journalist Teixeira Cândido, and the “manipulation of information”.
“These mechanisms weaken democratic institutions, the free market and the issue of transparency; we have an environment of directly awarded contracts, where Chinese and Russian companies operate with no transparency whatsoever and end up compromising electoral integrity (…)”, he said.
In the research, presented last week in Washington and carried out under a research grant provided by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the executive director of FoA points out that on Monday “the democratic backsliding in Angola and around the world” does not result from military coups, but through opaque development financing, digital surveillance tools, and information manipulation, which directly undermine electoral integrity.
He called on the government, political parties and civil society to work consistently and take action to strengthen institutions, to halt what he considered to be external interference in the erosion of democracy.
Angolan institutions, he said, “must be rebuilt”: “It is important that we have checks and balances; the judiciary and the legislature must be independent of the government".
Finally, he stressed the need for greater transparency in Angola regarding the management of natural resources, funds, and loans, and how they are spent, to mitigate endemic corruption, calling for a much more active civil society capable of questioning authority.
The Friends of Angola (FoA), founded in 2014 and based in Washington, works to defend democracy, human rights and transparency and is funded through donations and grants focused on supporting civil society.
Among its main partners is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organisation funded by the US Congress.
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