Angola 2018

Yearbook 2018

Angola. In September, the change of faith in Angolan politics was finally completed between José Eduardo dos Santos and his successor João Lourenço. dos Santos laughed at Lourenço’s leadership by failing to stand for election in 2017. When, after Lourenço’s election victory, he left the presidential post, it was after 38 years as the country’s head of state. However, it took another year before dos Santos laid down the club of presidents in the state-bearing party the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has ruled the country since independence in 1975.

• According to Abbreviationfinder: AGO is an three letter acronym for Angola.

In January, former Vice President Manuel Vicente was brought to trial in a court in Portugal. Vicente, who himself was not present in Lisbon, was accused of bribing the Portuguese prosecutor in an attempt to have two charges of money laundering dismissed. Following Angolan pressure and deteriorating relations between the countries, a Portuguese court in May decided that the trial could be moved to Angola. The prosecutor in Portugal had opposed this because in practice it would mean that Vicente would go free. He is subject to an amnesty issued by then-President dos Santos in 2017. According to Countryaah.com, Luanda is the capital city of Angola, a country located in Central Africa. Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa expressed the hope that the decision would again improve relations between the countries.

In March, Angola was one of 44 African countries that signed an agreement to lead to an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

In October, some 300,000 Congo (Kinshasa) migrants were forced to leave Angola. The Congolese were labeled as illegal immigrants, but their presence in the mining town of Lukapa, where many of them relied on mining diamonds, had hitherto been tolerated by the authorities. From an official point of view, migrants were reported to have voluntarily returned to their home country, but according to other reports, half the city’s population had been forced to flee. A large number of people must have had their homes looted and several killed.