A two-year bridge-building project in Angola has reopened a vital road to a large area of the country’s isolated eastern Moxico province, destroyed during a 27-year civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
The main road leading to Lumbula N’guimbo was heavily mined during the war, which ended in 2002, and every one of its bridges destroyed. In 2005, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) stepped in to rebuild it.
”This road is a vital lifeline for the entire region and tens of thousands of people will now be able to move around freely again, to take their children to clinics and their goods to market,” Bradley Guerrant, WFP country director in Angola, said in a statement.
”Families and communities in this part of eastern Angola have been cut off for years, but now they have the opportunity to start rebuilding their lives, boosting the socioeconomic development of the entire region,” he added.
The bridge-building project was funded by donors such as the European Commission, Britain, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway, and five wooden bridges and 11 steel bridges were built.
The WFP has also built 10 bridges in Lunda Sul province, helping families in previously inaccessible communities to travel freely.
Guerrant said the opening up of these Angolan provinces has paved the way for international traffic to resume between the south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, and will contribute to development across the region.
Oil-rich Angola’s infrastructure was largely destroyed during the civil war, which pitted the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) against the ruling Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). — Sapa-AFP