Half the population of Angola will have access to power by 2025

People walk on the side of the road in Malanje

Fourteen million Angolans will have access to electricity from the national grid by 2025, announced in Soyo, the capital of Zaire province, the Minister of Energy and Water, João Baptista Borges.

The population of Angola totaled 28.3 million people, according to an estimate announced in late January by the National Statistics Institute, of which 7.7 million people live in Luanda province.

“Our ultimate goal is that by 2025, about 14 million Angolans can benefit from electricity from the public system, which means a doubling of the access rate, either through large projects or with other smaller ones in municipalities and provinces across the country,” said the minister at the end of a visit to the construction work of the Soyo Combined-Cycle Power Station.

The minister noted there was a National Development Plan, whose priority is the execution of basic infrastructure related to water and electricity, with a view to universal access to these services, “as they are synonymous with development.”

“The completion of the Lauca and Cambambe dams will allow the northern system and the center system to be linked in order to bring electricity to Huambo and from there on to Lubango. The aim is to bring electricity from the main production centres to different regions of the country, to transform the current energy isolation of many regions that depend heavily on thermal sources,” said João Baptista Borges, cited by state newspaper Jornal de Angola.

The minister also said that all the municipal headquarters of Zaire province will be connected to the national electricity grid within two years of the signing of the contract for the work.  MDT/Macauhub