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Reviving agriculture brings new opportunities and life

Article - November 2, 2011
The Aldeia Nova Project affords ex-soldiers and displaced persons a chance to start again
DR JOSE CERQUEIRA, PROJECT DIRECTOR OF ALDEIA NOVA
The demographic shift from rural areas to cities, coupled with the removal of large amounts of fertile land from cultivation during the civil war caused such serious damage to Angola’s agricultural sector that it can only be repaired with a large dose of time and investment.

The tide is slowly turning, thanks to important emerging projects that are helping to incentivise the inhabitants of towns and villages to stay rather than move to Luanda, and Angola’s other major cities.

One such project is Aldeia Nova, or New Village in Portuguese, a nation-wide project with several goals: to promote and diversify agro-industry and to provide displaced persons and former soldiers and their families with employment, shelter and basic services, such as health care and education.

Initially launched in Wako Kungo in the Kwanza Sul province and now spread to various other provinces, Aldeia Nova has seen some £43 million in investment from the Angolan Govern-ment and has successfully installed thousands of people while improving infrastructure.

“We’ve managed to install in Wako 800 families and create an industry, an agricultural business. We were also able to rehabilitate a drainage channel network with more than 1,500 kilometres (932 miles). We are rehabilitating the municipal hospital and we are completing a project to capture and transport water to the whole city, not only for our structures,” explains Dr Jose Cerqueira, project director.

Aldeia Nova’s main achievement, according to Dr Cerqueira, is the development of a cane sugar project. Rigorous studies conducted over several years with specialists from the UK, Portugal and Brazil have resulted in the allotment of thousands of hectares for sugar cane plantations in Kwanza Sul, with varieties imported from Brazil and Uganda.

The sugar project, dubbed Procana, has created thousands of jobs and once production begins (unfortunately delayed by cuts in funding owing to the global financial recession), a portion of the sugar will then be converted into ethanol.

Cane sugar, furthermore, is a fast growing crop whose soil must go fallow for a year every five years. During this break, Dr Cerquiera envisions cultivating other crops, such as corn or soybeans, thus diversifying Angola’s agricultural output.

Aside from sugar, Aldeia Nova villages produce eggs, poultry, fruit, maize, soybeans and cattle.

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