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By Kevin Sieff* [caption id="attachment_31731" align="alignleft" width="300"] A girl stands beside a laundry line in a poor neighborhood overlooking Cabinda, a heavily guarded territory that accounts for half of Angola’s oil output. (Nichole Sobecki/For The Washington Post)[/caption] LUANDA, Angola — As the price of oil rose earlier this decade, this capital city did as well. Glass skyscrapers soared above the rubble of a 27-year civil war. American pop stars such as Mariah Carey were flown in to play private concerts. Luanda would become, its government announced, “a new Dubai.” But as oil prices have crashed, the impact on one of Africa’s richest and most unequal countries has been devastating. The same officials who boasted of Luanda’s sparkling ascent are asking for billions of dollars in loans. Thousands of people are dying of preventable illnesses, and the nation’s hospitals are out of medicine. A bag of rice can now cost five times what it did a year ago. On a continent where natural resources have driven generations of boom and bust, Angola has a remarkable and frightening distinction. It is more dependent on commodity exports than just about any other nation in sub-Saharan Africa. It is now paying for that reliance in tragic ways. This isn’t the only country suffering since the price of oil fell from more than $100 per barrel in 2014 to less than $30 last year, reaching roughly $40 recently. Venezuela is also struggling with shortages of food. Nigeria has been rocked by its biggest economic crisis in decades. But Angola’s descent has been largely hidden from the world, since visas are rarely granted to journalists. About 45 percent of Angola’s gross domestic product comes from the oil and gas sector, compared with 25 percent in Venezuela and 35 percent in Nigeria, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. At Luanda’s Cajueiros Hospital, the oil crisis has morphed into a health emergency. The hospital, like most in Angola, has run out of needles, surgical gloves and almost all medication. The only way patients get treatment is if they or their relatives buy those items on the black market. Most Angolans can’t afford them. In recent weeks, there were no HIV tests or tuberculosis vaccines available anywhere, according to Angolan and international health workers. After the government slashed its budget by 53 percent last year, the country did not purchase a single dose of malaria medication. In the first three months of 2016, Angola had roughly 1.3 million cases of the disease. At least 3,000 people have died, according to the World Health Organization.
“Now, when you go to any ministry and ask for something, the answer is the same: ‘We don’t have the money,’ ” said Francisco Songne, the top UNICEF representative in Angola. The economic crisis alone doesn’t explain the country’s alarming public-health mess. Angola’s government has long been riddled with corruption and plagued by mismanagement. The country has the world’s highest child mortality rate, with 1 in 6 children dying before age 5, according to UNICEF officials. Thanks to soaring oil prices and production, the country’s economy grew at an astonishing average of 17 percent per year from 2004 to 2008. By 2014, Angola had the third-highest GDP in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria and South Africa. But wealth became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, mostly people close to the political elite. Even when the economic downturn occurred, that elite was spending lavishly. In December, one of the country’s largest mobile-phone companies, Unitel, paid American rapper Nicki Minaj a reported $2 million to perform in Luanda. Unitel’s chief executive at the time was Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the Angolan president, José Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in office since 1979. In June, Isabel dos Santos — Africa’s first female billionaire — was appointed head of the state oil company. On a recent day, Christina Da Silva waited outside Cajueiros Hospital to deliver surgical gloves, needles and medicine for her husband, who had contracted malaria. She and her relatives had managed to pool enough money to pay for the $10 pills, an almost impossible price in a country where half of workers earn less than $2 a day. Before the crisis, the medication was free in public hospitals. “You borrow from your family. You borrow from your friends. You get the money however you can,” Da Silva said. “If you don’t get it, he dies.”*Culled from Washington Post