Angola Development

[close] ngola's oil wealth will not trickle down to the poor, argues Economist Leon Kukkuk above, "without an active and articulate civil society to demand it, which Angola does not have." But with a passive electorate in the bag, why is Dos Santos and MPLA nervous about next year's elections? Africa Confidential thinks they might have the electorate in the bag, but they don't yet have the perception of MPLA's invincibility in the bag:
For the first time in his 31 years in power, Angola’s President, José Eduardo dos Santos, gave a State of the Nation address to the National Assembly in Luanda on 15 October. His decision to do so was doubtless informed by the looming elections in 2012. In the speech – a new feature on the political calendar after the revision of Angola’s constitution in February – Dos Santos acknowledged the challenges of ‘hunger and poverty’ and conceded that the economy had hit serious problems when the price of crude oil fell by over US$100 per barrel. Despite the Movimento Popular de