Invented in Angola!

Nuremberg (From special envoy) - Angolan inventors, who represented the country at the recent International Fair of Ideas, Invention and New Products (IENA), received seven medals, one gold, one silver and five bronze in Nuremberg, Germany.  The Angolan representatives received eight medals from their participation in 2011.  

This exhibition, at which the eight inventors of Angola presented 17 projects and inventions, had 750 exhibitors from 54 countries. During four days, the projects presented were about inventions or linked to innovations and technologies, electric power, construction machinery, medical technology and medicine, hygiene, cosmetics, various security and alarm, traffic, transport, car accessories, farming, forest and game entertainment.

The most highly ranked Angolan inventions, as evaluated by the judges, were a camera with a USB pen drive and external hard disk, invented by Adilson da Costa (gold medal) and a signaling system for parking at a curb (silver medal), presented by inventor Hélder Silva.

All other Angolan inventions entered were: the use of industrial múcua, the new way of thinking in Mandombe, Angolan culture and art, as well as a computer mouse for those with disabled upper limbs, a multi-use calculator and one special software program, were the Angolan works awarded with bronze medals.

Angola, which is participating for the fourth time, enrolled to join countries such as Algeria, Bahrain, Bosnia Herzegovina, China, Denmark, Germany (host country), Finland, Great Britain, Russia, Hong Kong , Iran, Italy, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Korea, Croatia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Macedonia, Oman, Austria, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Hungary, USA, andVenezuela, among others. (Njango Angola, November 2012)

Golfing Angola: New Championship Course Opens

Until now, the golfing venues in Angola had been limited to a purely sand course in Benfica, situated just south of Luanda.

Recently, a new championship quality golf course has opened in Ingombota,  a site along the Kwanza River, some 70 km or 1.5 hour drive from Luanda.  Built on a land area of over 200 hectares beside the river,  the 18-hole Mangais Golf Club and Resort course has a distance of 7000 meters.   Designed as an ecotourism project to preserve the local environment and wildlife, the course incorporates 20 lakes and a 7.5 km canal that runs between the lush mangrove forest that encompasses the course.

Future plans for the golfing development incorporate the addition of two more 18 hole courses, a marina, airstrip and a 5 star hotel.  http://www.mangais.com/en/

Update on a Princess Diana's Angola Landmine Victim

(Mail Online, Luanda) Pictured 16 years on: The brave girl who won Diana's heart after losing leg in an Angolan landmine blast.

She was 13 and about to receive a prosthetic leg when Princess Diana visited her.

Poignant images of Sandra Tigica’s 1997 meeting with the Princess of Wales were beamed around the globe, highlighting the appalling problems in Angola, which had the world’s highest rate of death and disability caused by landmines.

Sandra’s left leg had been blown off by a landmine three years earlier as she fled from fighting in her country’s civil war. Diana, who died in a Paris car crash later that year, was in the Angolan capital, Luanda, to publicize her support for the Red Cross campaign for an end to the use of landmines.

Now Sandra is a married mother of three – and dreams that one day Prince William’s wife will carry on his mother’s good work.

She said: ‘Princess Diana helped our country. It is a much safer place thanks to her. I would like to meet “Princess Kate”. I have heard that she is doing a lot of charity work and I think she must continue what Princess Diana started. She should come to Angola.’ Sandra, who watched Kate’s wedding to Prince William on the internet and was delighted by news of her pregnancy, added: ‘I cried a lot, for many hours, when Diana died.

‘She brought hope to Angola. With the humanitarian support from foreign countries, the mines are disappearing little by little. But since she’s been gone, people have started to forget.’

According to the latest figures, 89 casualties from mine or explosive remnants of war devices were reported in Angola in 2011 – at least six of which were children. Total casualty estimates over the years range from 23,000 to 80,000.

It was on January 14, 1997, that Sandra chatted to Diana as they sat on a dusty wall at the Neves Bendinha Orthopaedic Workshop on the outskirts of Luanda.

Sandra recalled: ‘She stroked my face and told me lots of nice things including how she was looking forward to improving conditions in my country.’

Sandra got a prosthetic leg, but she shuns her current one – choosing instead to use crutches. ‘The legs made here are too heavy and I can’t move properly,’ she said.

She earns £130 a month writing letters for the local government, while her husband is in the military. They live in a 20ft x 40ft hut with a corrugated iron roof in Angola’s rural Lunda Sul province with their three children, aged four, six and eight, and Sandra’s 13-year-old sister.

Inside, the photograph of Sandra and Diana takes pride of place on a wall. It is also used in schoolbooks in Angola, and Sandra is recognized wherever she goes because of it. She is looking forward to seeing the meeting recreated in the forthcoming film about Diana’s final years, starring Naomi Watts.

‘I can’t believe I will feature in a big film – I will be played by an actress!’ Sandra said. ‘I don’t have a TV so cannot watch it. But I would like to come to the UK and see it.’ (www.dailymail.co.uk)

Remembering January 4 in Angola

Luanda — The Angolan people are celebrating on Friday, January 04, the Colonial Repression Martyrs' Day, with political, cultural and sports activities.

The date is of extreme importance in the context of the struggle for national liberation against colonialism, since it marked the start of an uprising in Baixa do Cassanje against the Portuguese colonial occupation of about 500 years (1482-1975), with devastating human and material consequences.

The Baixa de Casanje revolt is considered the first battle of the Angolan War of Independence and the Portuguese Colonial War.  The uprising began on February 3, 1961 in the region of Baixa do Cassanje, district of Malanje, Portuguese Angola. By February 4, the Portuguese authorities had successfully suppressed the revolt.

On January 3, agricultural workers employed by Cotonang, a Portuguese-Belgium cotton plantation company, staged a protest to force the company to improve their working conditions. The protest, which later became known as the Baixa de Cassanje revolt, was led by two previously unknown Angolans, António Mariano and Kulu-Xingu. During the protest, the Angolan workers burned their identification cards and physically attacked Portuguese traders on the company premises. The protest led to a general uprising, to which Portuguese authorities responded with an air raid on twenty villages in the area, killing large numbers of Angolan villagers. 

After independence from Portugal in 1975, the Angolan government designated February 4 a national holiday, "Colonial Repression Martyrs Day," in 1996 in remembrance of the attack. To the Angolan people, this date continues to inspire different generations of Angolan children in their actions in defence of liberty and well-being. (AllAfrica.com)

Historic City Series: Lobito

The city of Lobito is long considered “the guest room of Angola”. Located on the south-central Angolan coast, in the province of Benguela, it is the city that most resembles Luanda, adorned with a wide bay, where stands the Port of Lobito, and a magnificent tongue of land which penetrates the sea - the famous Restinga ex-libris of the city, which hosts the famous Carnival of Lobito.

The Restinga do Lobito is the most attractive area of the city, with over ten kilometers of white sandy beaches and clear waters, a network of hotels, restaurants and bars, which extends from the Colina da Saudade to Ponto Final, with its towering lighthouse guiding the constant movement of ships towards the country's second port in importance and grandeur, after the one in Luanda.

Categorized as “international first class seaport”, with its mineral pier recently expanded and modernized, it is in line with the Benguela Railway (CFB), for flow of goods into the interior of Angola and neighboring countries - particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, which need it mainly for export of its minerals.

The origin of the name Lobito comes from the word Pitu in Umbundu language, preceded by the particle Olu, which results in Olupitu, which means “door, walkway, passage", which the caravans of porters coming down the hills from the interior, travelled before reaching the “trade square” of Catumbela. With the passage of time, the name changed from Olupitu to Lupitu and, then, was finally translated to Portuguese to Lobito. 

Historical records show that the establishment of the city was prompted by the sea access to the major resources of the area:  produce of the local lime ovens, sea salt and the storage and launching point of human cargo (slaves) for international transaction; already illegal practice but widespread in the world by those who found physical shelter in this harbor and tax evasion”.

Proposals for founding the city of Lobito date back to 1650, addressed to the then Portuguese Overseas Council. Given the importance of the location, in 1842 an Regal ordinance from D. Maria II ordered the change of the administration from the “stagnant and unhealthy Benguela, to the most favorable zone, bounded by hills and low breakwater (sandbank) safe and attractive” of Lobito.

In 1902, the potential of Lobito Bay is recognized, in 1906 the port’s project is elaborated and, in the surrounding region, the design of the first part of the city (shopping today) emerges, made official on September 2nd, 1913, by order of the governor Norton de Matos.


In 1923 begins the construction of the port, opening up to exploration in 1928, and in 1931 the British builders take Benguela’s railway from Lobito to the border with the then Belgian Congo, currently the Democratic Republic of Congo. With the construction of the port and the railway line, Lobito would become the first city in Angola after Luanda, to exceed 100 thousand inhabitants to about 1970. Today, it still retains a remarkable human and urban growth, being of the cities of greater economic development in Angola, with its tourism potential, its cement industry and its factories of equipment for the exploration and production of oil. (TAAG Austral Magazine)