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Jevans Nyabiage

China has paid tribute to late Angolan leader José Eduardo dos Santos, whose presidency saw the rise of an oil-for-cash relationship with Beijing that became known as the Angolan model.
Do Santos died in Barcelona, Spain, aged 79 on Friday, and was in power for 38 years until 2017.
He was a key Chinese ally on the continent, with the number of Chinese in Angola reaching a peak of more than 300,000 during a post-civil war construction boom. That number has dropped to less than 20,000 today, according to researchers.
The Chinese embassy in Luanda said China “deeply regretted the death” of dos Santos, a “friend of the Chinese people, who made great contributions to friendship and cooperation between China and Angola”.


President Joao Lourenco announced seven days of national mourning from Saturday.
“Angola has just lost a great son, someone who dedicated his entire youth, his entire life, for the good of Angola and the Angolans,” Lourenço said.
Most leaders in Africa gave him glowing tributes describing him as a liberation struggle hero but for many others, he was a dictator, whose regime benefited his family and a few political elites as the rest of the population remained in poverty.
Russian-educated dos Santos, who became president in 1979 four years after Angola gained independence from Portugal, spent more than two decades fighting rival forces at a time when the country had become a proxy battlefield in the Cold War.
His People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) controlled the capital Luanda with the help of 5000 Cuban forces while the rival forces of Jonas Savimbi’s Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) controlled a small enclave near the southeastern Angolan town of Jamba with support from South Africa and Zambia.
Gregg Brazinsky, a professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University, said China was involved in the Angolan civil war during the 1960s but was not on the side of the MPLA.
“It viewed the MPLA as being too close to the Soviets and this was an era of tension between Moscow and Beijing,” said Brazinsky, author of Winning the Third World, Sino-American Rivalry During the Cold War.
Once the Angolan civil war ended, however, Chinese involvement in Angola increased as China wanted to increase its presence in Africa – especially its economic presence – and dos Santos wanted an alternative to Western aid and investment, Brazinsky said.
At the end of the 27-year Angolan civil war in 2002 after the killing of Savimbi, dos Santos was in desperate need of financial resources for post-conflict reconstruction.
China was not the Angolan government’s first choice to help with post-war reconstruction but Western countries were reluctant to invest unless Luanda agreed to greater transparency and accountability in the management of the oil revenues.
China stepped in by offering investment without conditions in a period that coincided with then Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s “going out strategy” of encouraging Chinese state and private enterprises to venture overseas.
China advanced cheap money that the West was reluctant to provide in exchange for oil – in what came to be known as the “Angola model”. China Exim Bank released a US$2 billion loan for post-war reconstruction and the loan was doubled to US$4 billion in 2006.
Angola, Sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer, became Africa’s biggest destination for Chinese capital, receiving US$42.6 billion from Chinese lenders – more than a quarter of China’s total lending to African countries between 2000 and 2020.


Dominik Kopinski, an associate professor at the University of Wroclaw in Poland, said dos Santos’ relationship with China could be characterised by two words: cosy and opaque.
“There was, however, not much mutual love in it and it was the West’s reluctance to finance Angola’s reconstruction after the civil war ended in 2002, that pushed José Eduardo dos Santos into Chinese arms,” Kopinski said.
“So, in a way, the West indirectly played a role of a matchmaker in this relationship.”
End of ‘Angola model’ sees number of Chinese in oil-rich country plummet
Dos Santos stepped down in 2017 and was replaced by Joao Lourenco, known as JLo. By then, Angola’s economic prospects had deteriorated. Lourenco promised to reverse the nation’s dwindling fortunes, diversify the oil-dependent economy and reduce its excessive reliance on China.
As president, Lourenco, a former defence minister, has led an anti-corruption campaign targeting his predecessor’s family and close associates that has seen a number of them charged, including Isabel dos Santos, the ex-president’s eldest daughter, who stands accused of money laundering and mismanagement while head of state-owned oil firm Sonangol.
“JLo [Lourenco] visibly distanced himself from China, and there are reasons to believe the Sino-Angolan marriage of convenience has entered a period of rocky introspection,” said Kopinski, who is also a co-founder of the Polish Centre for African Studies.
Brazinsky said dos Santos was a critical ally for China and much of Beijing’s influence in Angola was tied to his leadership.
Higher oil prices help Angola pay off debts to Chinese banks
Marisa Lourenco, an analyst at Control Risks, a global risk consultancy, said ties between Angola and China were strong from the early 2010s.
“The government needed to expand and modernise port and air infrastructure but didn’t have the capital to do so, especially after the oil price crash of 2014. China stepped in and provided the loans needed to finance these projects, of course on the condition that its state-owned construction projects carried out the work,” he said.
Lourenco said China was willing to lend to Angola at a time when Angola needed the help, and it came without conditions such as for democratic reforms.
She said China had since pulled back because it no longer needed to keep its state-owned construction companies busy to support its economy.
“But the Lourenço administration has also pivoted to the West since taking over in 2017, to appeal to a wider pool of foreign private investors and to secure help from the International Monetary Fund,” she said.


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Dos Santos’ presidency oversaw the rise of the ‘Angolan model’ – cheap money for oil
He was a critical ally for China and much of Beijing’s influence in Angola was tied to his leadership, analyst says



Dos Santos’ presidency oversaw the rise of the ‘Angolan model’ – cheap money for oil.


Jose Eduardo dos Santos: the Angolan leader who looked to China to fund reconstruction

Dos Santos’ presidency oversaw the rise of the ‘Angolan model’ – cheap money for oil He was a critical ally for China and much of Beijing’s influence in Angola was tied to his leadership, analyst says

Dos Santos’ presidency oversaw the rise of the ‘Angolan model’ – cheap money for oil

He was a critical ally for China and much of Beijing’s influence in Angola was tied to his leadership, analyst says