Government appeals for aid to provide electricity

Only a few Angolans benefit each year from the country's power supply due to the poor state of infrastructure, a top government official said on Thursday.

The Minister of Energy and Water, Luis Filipe da Silva said that US $500 million was needed to rehabilitate the power infrastructure destroyed by almost three decades of civil war, Angolan news agency ANGOP reported.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) 19th meeting of Power Companies Managing Committee, da Silva said that by restoring the country's hydroelectric supply many more Angolans would have electricty. He added that many of the country's neighbours would also benefit.

"As the second biggest oil producing country in sub-Saharan Africa (with a production of nearly 750,000 barrels per day) after Nigeria, Angola also has considerable reserves of natural and associated gas," he said.

The region had a number of important projects - such as the west corridor that was based on the construction of a high tension line between the Inga dam in Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Namibia and passed through South Africa interconnecting between Zambia and Tanzania - that could provide power to east Africa, da Silva said.

Meanwhile, the country's Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Jorge Chocoti called on the UN to assist in mending the rift between the government and former UNITA rebels, which he said was crucial to sustaining peace.

Chocoti told a closed-meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday that the demobilisation of UNITA soldiers "went well and we pray that on the political side we will not have many differences".

The government has yet to respond to a proposal, put foward by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week, for an expanded UN mandate in the country.

If approved by the Security Council, the new beefed-up UN Mission in Angola (UNMA), would include a special representative of the secretary-general who would assume the lead on the provision of UN support for the political and military functions envisaged in the first and second phases of the peace process, and help to conclude the implementation of the Lusaka Protocol.

Annan is expected to visit Angola from 25 to 27 August.