Africa-Press – Angola. The President of the Republic and acting President of the African Union (AU), João Lourenço, considered, this Monday, that peace and security is one of the priorities for the continent, as leader of this organization.
Speaking in an interview with the Angolan Public Television (TPA), João Lourenço, who has been president of this organization for a year since February this year, defended the need to end the multiple latent armed conflicts in Africa. In the interview that lasted more than an hour, in which he addressed several topics, the Angolan statesman lamented the fact that these conflicts are not reducing, but, on the contrary, are tending to worsen.He recalled that a few years ago, when African leaders spoke of peace and security, their concern was only with the situation in the Sahel region, with the fall of the regime of the late Libyan President, Muammar Gaddafi, but this quickly extended to Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. João Lourenço pointed out that, currently, concerns have turned to Central Africa and the Great Lakes Region, with particular emphasis on the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Mozambique and Somalia. “There are many conflicts and wars prevailing on our continent, and therefore, as acting President of the AU, without a shadow of a doubt, the main concern has to do with peace and security in Africa”, he said.
He stressed that without peace and security, there can be no talk of economic development.
Still on the African continent, another concern, according to the AU leader, is the need for development on the continent, which is linked to the creation of more infrastructure.
In this regard, he cited the example of Angola, where, as soon as the armed conflict ended, the main concern was to obtain financing for national reconstruction, in order to build infrastructure from scratch.
He stated that the size of the African continent is a matter of extrapolating what happened in Angola and what is happening in Africa.
He noted that the continent lacks infrastructure, especially roads, motorways, railways, ports, telecommunications, energy and water.
The Angolan Head of State highlighted the issue of the lack of energy in African countries as fundamental, due to the fact that the continent is essentially agricultural.“Our intention is to overcome this stage and become an industrialized continent, like Europe and Asia, among others, today.” In his view, for industrialization to occur, there must be sufficient energy. For João Lourenço, it is an aberration that the continent has rivers with a large flow and sufficient headwaters for the construction and use of hydroelectric plants to produce energy, but if someone flies over the continent at night, all they see is darkness. “For the size of Africa, what is illuminated is negligible. We need to invest heavily in the production, distribution and transportation of electricity if we want to see the continent develop,” he stressed.
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