Menongue - Holder of several mineral, water and forest resources, the south-east province of Cuando Cubango, the second largest in Angola, is gradually abandoning the label of "land at the end of the world".
By Diogo Fernandes/Maurício Sequesseque/Adriano Chisselele, ANGOP journalists
Meanwhile, despite the signs being recorded, mainly, in the social and economic sectors, the region is still racing against the time to make real its new designation, that of "land of progress".
Agriculture is one of the main drivers of growth in this province, known for its past period of wartime, which conditioned progress for several decades.
Currently, Cuando Cubango is waiting for public and private investments to flourish, particularly in agricultural fields.
With 199,049 square kilometers, the province has arable land, with, for example, 2,564 hectares of land being prepared for the 2022/2023 agricultural campaign.
This is a number considered low, which results from the limitations in the number of peasants, the absence of investors and the lack of agricultural inputs, according to the provincial director of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Rafael Samba.
According to the ANGOP interlocutor, the province lacks serious investment in the field of agriculture, which, at the moment, is limited to subsistence, which is why the intervention of the private sector is expected.
In this sense, the provincial government has appealed to businessmen for the need to invest in the countryside, in order to boost the production and distribution of agricultural products.
Despite all the constraints, global production can reach 212 tons of different products, mainly potatoes, cassava, corn, tomatoes and rice, the latter being produced mainly by the Longa Agro-industrial Farm, an infrastructure that tries to rebuild up, after three years of standstill.
Like Longa Farm, Cuando Cubango has another large-scale agricultural production project, which has also come to a standstill. This is the Missombo Irrigated Perimeter, created in the 1970s, but doomed to fail (non-productivity).
Located 16 kilometers from Menongue, the capital of Cuando Cubango, the Perimeter is, like the Longa Agro-industrial Farm, a large-scale agricultural production project. However, it is currently inactive due to unknown reasons.
The Irrigated Perimeter was, until the 1980s, a major producer of cereals, vegetables and fruits, before being abandoned a few years later by Portuguese citizens who lived and worked there.
In 1999, the Angolan Government, given the state of abandonment it was in, invested USD 12 million to modernize the space and make it productive.
The amount was used to modernize the dam on the Cuebe River, which went from two to 26 gates, and to build a 6.5-kilometre irrigation canal, in addition to a water retention basin, in order to guarantee the annual production of 80,000 tons of food.
Despite the investment, large-scale food production never came to fruition, due to the lack of more resources for the acquisition, outside the country, of a wide range of agricultural inputs.
According to ANGOP, the Government of Cuando Cubango resorted, in 2011, to the Society for the Development of Irrigated Perimeters, to make better use of the Irrigated Perimeter of Missombo.
After the first crops of maize, millet, sorghum and beans were made and, despite the harvests having been reasonable, the project again did not produce the desired effects.
In addition to the 300 hectares reserved for the cultivation of maize, millet, sorghum and beans, SOPIR had reserved 450 hectares for the creation of an orchard of orange, tangerine, lemon, mango, pear and papaya trees.
The overall investment was around 40 million US dollars, which also included the construction of two pigsties, two poultry breeding facilities, two toilet tanks, vaccination sleeves, the acquisition of hundreds of cattle, goats and sheep. and thousands of pre-raised chicks, as well as the installation of two center pivots for irrigation. However, the lack of further funding made the project unfeasible.
To change the scenario, the local government resorted to financing from Keve bank, of around 60 million kwanzas, for a significant number of beneficiaries, to whom it handed over two hectares of land, but the strategy again did not work and the irrigated perimeter was left without any kind of production, a situation that lasts until today.
Problematic flow
Given the extension of the province, which has one of the lowest rates of inhabitants in the country, with around 606,615 citizens, the connection among municipalities takes several kilometers, a situation aggravated by the absence of a properly orchestrated transport system and the lack of organised road structures between the city center and the interior of the communities, the main agricultural producer in the province.
Added to this element is the absence of technical means (tractors and implements), according to the municipal director of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of Cuito Cuanavale, Fernando Chamba.
"We have difficulties of various kinds, mainly lack of technical means, such as tractors and implements, as well as transport to transport products from the field to the sales center", he explained.
ANGOP traveled to the municipality of Cuito Cuanavale, where there are three potential agricultural production areas, namely the municipal headquarters, Longa and Lupiri, the latter considered the main producer of maize in the region.
To give you an idea, a peasant in Lupiri annually produces three and a half tons of corn, in a universe of 7,875 peasants, distributed among 16 cooperatives and 189 peasant associations.
In terms of cereals, Cuito Cuanavale has invested in the production of maize, millet, sorghum , beans, carioca beans and rice.
In addition to cereals, the municipality produces vegetables, mainly onions, cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes, and in each agricultural season it reaches close to 50 tons of onions.
