Throughout most of the past decade and a half, the blessings of Angola’s oil wealth have been clear for all to see. Oil has propelled much of the significant economic success experienced by the country since the end of the civil war in 2002. Angolan gross domestic product (GDP) growth has been in high-single or low-double digits for most of the post-war period, per capita income has increased considerably and the banking sector has grown from almost nothing to measuring its collective assets in the tens of billions of dollars.
Look beyond the headline-grabbing changes made by this resource bonanza, however, and the picture is a little different. Like oil on water, petro-wealth has given the Angolan economy a nice surface sheen, but has yet to fundamentally improve its depth. It has not conquered Angola’s endemic joblessness. Indeed, unemployment remains stubbornly high at 6.8%, according to World Bank figures. Education levels are still poor, and infrastructure remains too weak to support economic activity in the country’s vast hinterland.
