Africa-Press – Angola. The search for better financing conditions for funds for the maintenance of roads in southern African countries brought together, this Tuesday (8), in Luanda, representatives from Comoros, Lesotho, Malawi, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe, under the aegis of the African Association of Road Maintenance Funds.
The Minister of State and Economic Coordination, Manuel Nunes Júnior, representing the President of the Republic, presided over the opening session, defending that no country can develop without adequate infrastructure that guarantees sustainable and efficient growth of its economy.
Manuel Nunes Júnior highlighted that the infrastructures include roads that connect the various regions of a territory and that guarantee the quick and safe movement of people and goods.
“Roads are a crucial factor for the growth of any country. It is not enough to build roads. It is essential that they are serviced, so that they remain safe and can have a long useful life, hence the importance of this association of an organization from Africa , of an organization created in 2003, in which Angola formally joined in May of this year”, he said.
“After the conquest of definitive peace in Angola, in 2002, our country took a very important step in terms of the rehabilitation of roads throughout the national territory, leading to a significant improvement in the movement of people and goods”, he continued.
The minister of State and Economic Coordination stressed that after several kilometers of road had been built and rehabilitated, Angola had not been successful in terms of maintenance.
“As in everything in life, we must learn from the experience of others. Here in our region of Southern Africa, on our continent and even in other countries in Southern Africa, there are successful experiences, with regard to the quality of their road infrastructures ”, he admitted.
Within the scope of this association, he added, one should study well and “these experiences and apply them in our country. Imitating good practices should be seen as an act of wisdom and not as an act of discredit. We have to study the best experiences of the countries of our region, above all, in aspects of being able to organize investments in roads, in a context of scarcity of financial resources. In a word, we have to be more and more efficient”, he said.
Manuel Nunes Júnior appealed to the need to take advantage of the regional association to level road infrastructures with neighboring countries and prepare Angola for opening transnational, regional and continental road sections.
He said that Angola took the initiative to join this association in 2021, on a proposal from the Mozambican Road Funds, having participated for the first time in a regional meeting in February 2022, in Maseru, Lesotho.
“The formalization only took place in May of this year, as I mentioned earlier, at the General Assembly held in Dakar. In view of the performance shown by Angola, in the short time that has elapsed since its accession, the participants of this General Assembly of Qatar unanimously deliberated that the Angola Road Fund would hold a regional meeting of the Association in Luanda”, he clarified.
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