Angola

The Angola government launched a plan on Wednesday to halve the number of cases of malaria by the end of the decade in a country where up to 30 000 people are thought to die of the disease every year. ”Malaria is the deadliest disease in Angola,” Health Minister Sebastiao Veloso told a press conference.

Angola has rolled out a massive voter-registration drive ahead of its first elections since 1992, but questions remain over when the long-awaited polls will take place in the oil-rich nation recovering from civil war. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was the first of Angola’s 13-million people to register on Wednesday for elections that could take place as early as next year.

Angola on Tuesday launched a voter-education programme ahead of its first post-war polls due next year with the prime minister warning against foreigners being registered for the key election. ”We have to be careful that those who do not fulfil the conditions required by law to vote are not registered,” Prime Minister Fernando da Piedade Dias Dos Santos said, kicking off the campaign in the oil-rich nation.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has offered his country’s oil expertise to Angola, sub-Saharan Africa’s number two crude producer, in a strategy to boost ties with what he calls "Mother Africa" and counter United States influence there. "It’s absolutely a lie that the destiny of the world has to be signed off by Washington," he said in a speech at the presidential palace in Luanda.

A 20-strong alliance of opposition parties denounced on Friday what they called the slow rate of preparations for staging Angola’s first elections since the end of the civil war four years ago. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, in power since 1979, has pledged to stage the historic ballot before the end of next year.

Angola has reinforced troops along its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), fearing possible unrest in the area after the winners of landmark elections are announced, a top army official said on Wednesday. ”We do not know what could happen in the DRC after the results are announced,” General Geraldo Sachipendo Nunda said on radio.

The Angolan government signed a peace agreement on Tuesday with a group that has fought for self-rule in the country’s main oil-producing region, but other armed separatists said they would continue their struggle. Senior governing party politicians and military chiefs signed the deal along with Antonio Bento Bembe, who said he represented the Cabinda Forum for Dialogue.

Cholera in Angola has spread to a 15th province as the death toll reached 2 089 and the number of cases exceeded 50 000, the World Health Organisation said on Monday. The deadly but easily treatable water-borne disease broke out in Luanda’s northern slum of Boa Vista and rapidly spread throughout the seaside capital.

A cholera epidemic in war-devastated Angola has claimed 1 246 lives with more than 35 000 people ill with the disease, the World Health Organisation announced on Tuesday. Cholera, a highly infectious waterborne disease that causes severe diarrhoea, is present in large swathes of Angola.

More than 1 000 people have died from a cholera outbreak in Angola over the past 11 weeks, with more than 25 000 others ill from the disease, according to the regional office of the World Health Organisation. The outbreak was detected in the Luanda district of Boa Vista on February 13 and the capital has been the hardest hit by the epidemic with 13 379 cases registered, including 197 deaths.

The death toll after a deadly outbreak of cholera in war-devasted Angola has climbed to 900, a medical humanitarian organisation said on Thursday, reporting one death every hour this week. The last toll reported by the United Nations’s World Health Organisation stood at 570 just over a week ago.

Cholera has claimed more than 570 lives over the past two months in the war-devastated Southern African nation of Angola, where police on Wednesday vowed to join the fight against the epidemic. A total of 12 176 people have been affected by cholera with 118 deaths in the capital city of Luanda.

Angola is to draw up measures designed to prevent an outbreak of bird flu, which has been officially declared in three African nations, according to a parliamentary decree. A committee of experts from the military, health sectors and government organisations has been set up to chart a programme of action.

Hopes of democratic elections in Angola during the new year faded on Friday after warnings it would take many months to register voters in the vast, mine-strewn Southern African nation.

Eleven African countries organising the next summit on the troubled Great Lakes region set for December will meet in Angola next week to prepare a pact on border security, a United Nations official said on Thursday. The meeting will also discuss protecting displaced people and setting up a regional certification scheme for natural resources so that they are not used to finance wars.

About 2 000 families in five Angolan provinces are facing famine with malnutrition affecting up to 60% of the population, according to a recent study by the United Nations World Food Programme. In some remote areas, Angolans are living on one meal a day, while babies aged six to 20 months are suffering the most from malnutrition as drinking water is not available, said the study.

Angola plans to begin rebuilding its roads destroyed in the 1975-2002 civil war, starting with a 300km stretch between the capital Luanda and the northern agricultural and mining province of Uige, the national road body said on Tuesday. Almost all of the country’s main roads are unusable after the war.

A place at the 2006 World Cup in Germany seemed a distant prospect for Angola less than two years ago after a disastrous start to their qualifying campaign. But the Palancas Negros face Nigeria in Kano on Saturday knowing a draw will keep them top of Group 4 and within sight of a first appearance at the quadrennial international football showcase.

Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo has accused the United Nations of treating African nations like ”colonies”, by siding with their former colonial rulers in decisions about the continent. ”As far as Côte d’Ivoire goes, the Security Council systematically turns to France,” Gbagbo told Angolan state media on Monday.