I wanted to pass along this interesting piece that ran in Saturday’s Financial Times.

You might have read that Angola is in the process of emerging from an extremely protracted civil war. In an attempt to secure peace and economic stability, Angola announced a plan to expand farming that could feed the country and attract $6 billion in agriculture investments over the next 5 years.

Excerpts below, full article here

With arable land of 35m hectares – an area the size of Germany – Angola used to feed its own people as well as satisfy world demand for coffee, sisal, bananas and sugar before the outbreak of a conflict that raged for nearly three decades.

Today it imports more than half its food and only 10 per cent of productive land is cultivated. Keen to diversify the economy away from the oil that has brought rollercoaster expansion since a 2002 peace accord and reduce dependence on foreign food, the government is in the early stages of discussions with leading agriculture investors from Brazil, Spain, Canada, the US, Argentina and its former colonial power Portugal, Joaquím Duarte Gomes, head of planning at the agriculture ministry, told the Financial Times.

The $6bn target by 2013 – compared with total non-oil foreign direct investment of $924m last year – is ambitious. Business people in Luanda complain of graft and labyrinthine bureaucracy. It takes 119 days to set up a company, according to the World Bank, more than double the regional average.

-Chris Scott