Luanda, Aug. 27, 2025 (Lusa) - Agronomist and former member of Angola's Council of the Republic Fernando Pacheco said on Wednesday that Angola lacks institutions capable of guiding the course of the economy, especially agriculture, and that the business environment discourages entrepreneurs.
The former member of the Council of the Republic during the first term of Angolan President João Lourenço said that the Angolan economy needs to be guided by structured and equipped institutions so that production, especially agricultural production, has a sustainable impact on people's lives.
The country's current situation, he said, speaking on the sidelines of the Angola Economic Forum (AEF-2025), is the result of the lack of "sufficiently structured and equipped institutions to be able to guide the course of our economy properly, but we also have the problem of a lack of entrepreneurs".
Fernando Pacheco said that the country had few entrepreneurs, who are therefore unable, "no matter how good they are, to leverage the economy, especially agriculture".
"On the other hand, it's a fact that the business environment (...) discourages both nationals, and I'm concerned first and foremost with nationals, but also foreigners," he pointed out.
The agronomist acknowledged that there is an effort to attract foreign investment, but this investment, he insisted, "doesn't come about because the business environment [in Angola] isn't attractive enough".
"The country has to realise that if it doesn't seriously invest in its institutions, things will never improve," he stressed.
The former advisor, one of the speakers on the panel that discussed Angola's economic history and assessed economic policy options in the post-independence period, also criticised the lack of investment in business incubation, especially during the period of the highest oil revenues.
"If we had made a serious investment in incubating companies, in training entrepreneurs, if we had recognised that this was a deficit that we had, due to colonialism, but also due to the war, we would have more capable entrepreneurs today, both from the point of view of management, technique and vision," he noted.
"Unfortunately, the fact that we had a series of situations that resulted from the increase in the price of oil and its production at the national level meant that we went ahead with some projects that were, in my opinion, unrealistic," he criticised.
The consultant and researcher also said that the large industrial farms, built after the armed conflict in 2002, “consumed around $2 billion at the time and the results were very negative”.
"So much so that the government then had to privatise these projects and then begin, from 2014 onwards, always in the field of agriculture, a new phase that we are going through now, where there are still some difficulties, but it seems to me that the path is now more assertive," Fernando Pacheco concluded.
The AEF-2025, which brings together more than 70 speakers, including politicians, economists, government officials, academics, businesspeople and diplomats, is taking place until Friday in Luanda under the slogan "Celebrating History, Boosting the Future of the Economy", alluding to the 50th anniversary of Angola's independence.
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