IJUP08 - Universidade do Porto

Natural resources course
B. Magalhães, C. Mota, F. Martins, J. Silva, L. Fernandes, N. Teixeira, P. Monteiro, P.
Santos, R. Oliveira, T. Teixeira and V. Oliveira
Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, University of Porto, Portugal
A clear example of a rich country in natural resources is Angola, especially oil, but one of
the problems these types of countries have is a large tendency for bad government, armed
conflicts and weak action in terms of economic and social development: we could say that
countries with fragile institutions have also little capacity to tolerate the destructive forces
of corruption, nevertheless if these resources were properly used, Angola would be one of
the richest countries of Africa. Our purpose is to prove that there is a correlation between
population, political movements and natural resources.
The used method is based on OCDE/AIE Report 2006, which analyses statistical data to
elaborate a thematic cartography using the ArcGis 9.2 program, seeking to conclude that
there is an historical relation between the three vector areas.
With a relatively small population, only 14,5 million inhabitants, Angola should be capable
to present indicators of well-being among the most developed countries in Africa, instead
of that, war and bad government increase the oil waste. This way it becomes very
interesting to analyze natural resources, demographic and political movements in Angola,
including Cabinda´s area, once they origin many social and economic deficiencies.
It becomes clear that the different political movements had as main purpose to control
natural resources. Quality in administrating resources will probably be the most important
factor to determine if Angola achieves a maintainable peace or if, it falls once again in
conflict. There are two essential questions:
- to know which are the government priorities concerning expenses;
- the transparency in the administration of public finances.
For several years, and for armed conflict reasons, most of the economic resources have
been spent in defense purposes instead of being used in social areas, like education and
health, highways and water supply, that’s one of the main reasons for the delay in the
general development of Angola´s territory.
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