Perched in an isolated spot some 30km (18 miles) outside Angola’s capital, Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units.
Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of $3.5bn (£2.2bn).
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“There is no middle class in Angola, just the very poor and the very rich, and so there is no-one to buy these sorts of houses.”
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Kilamba was financed by a Chinese credit line – which Angola is repaying with oil – so it has technically been paid for.
But if the houses go unsold, then the Angolan government will be left with stock on their hands and a potentially wasted investment.
Africans who excoriate whites and Europeans for racism, colonialism, and slavery, seem to have no problem with oppressive brutal dictatorships (else they’d band together and overthrow them, and not let them be re-established) or having such governments turning over all their natural resources to the Chinese in exchange for nothing of real value (despite the high cost).
Ian Smith was right. Africans are not fit to govern themselves, and never will be.
