João Lourenço: The man tasked to end Angola’s economic crisis

ANGOLAN president- elect João Lourenço will begin his five-year term with a major challenge.

The 63- year- old former defence minister needs to pull the oil-rich southern African nation out of a deep economic crisis caused by tumbling global oil prices.

Oil accounted for about half of Angola’s gross domestic product in 2016, according to data cited by the official news agency, Agencia Angola Press.

Lourenço is taking over from Jose Eduardo dos Santos, 74, who ruled Angola for almost 38 years and left as his legacy a huge divide between rich and poor.

The shiny skyscrapers and luxury cars in the capital, Luanda, stand in stark contrast to the squalor of the slums in the country, where nearly 37% of residents live in poverty, according to the latest World Bank figures, from 2008.

Lourenço won Wednesday’s election with a pledge to fight corruption. But he is not expected to challenge the financial might of the Dos Santos family, whose business empire extends to nearly every sector of Angola’s economy.

Lourenço will be Angola’s first head of state bound by the new constitution, which the National Assembly approved in 2010. It limits a president to serving two five-year terms.

Born in March 1954 in the town of Lobito, in western Angola, Lourenço – the son of a nurse and a seamstress – grew up in a politically active family and as a student joined Angola’s fight for independence from colonial power Portugal.

He joined the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in 1974, one year before Angola became independent, and has since remained a loyalist, quietly but surely rising through the party ranks.

During Angola’s civil war, from 1975 to 2002 between the MPLA and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola rebels, Lourenço was trained as an artillery general.

In 1978, he went to the Soviet Union to study and receive additional military training.

Two years after his return to Angola, in 1984, Lourenço became governor of the east- ern Moxico province.

In 1998, he was made general secretary of the MPLA. Five years later, he became vice-president of the national assembly.

Lourenco was appointed defence minister in 2014, and vice president of the MPLA in 2016. He was selected as the MPLA’s presidential candidate in December 2016.

The football and martial arts fan is married to former planning minister and World Bank official Ana Dias Lourenço, with whom he has six children.– dpa

PICTURE: AP João Lourenço shows his ink-stained finger after casting his vote in elections in Luanda, Angola.