AngolaExpert · Country File
The African Development Bank & Angola
In Brief
- Angola joined the Bank as a regional member country in 1980; cumulative approvals had reached USD 3.36 billion by late 2025.
- The active portfolio was valued at USD 1.45 billion in October 2025 and USD 1.7 billion by May 2026, spanning energy, water, transport, agriculture, finance and environment.
- The Eastern Region Agricultural Value Chain Development Project combines USD 211.4 million from the Bank with USD 100 million from government, targeting 240,000 farming households across six provinces.
- The Bank made USD 300 million available for the Lobito Corridor in May 2026, and approved USD 265 million for Zambia's side of the same corridor in August.
- The current Country Strategy Paper runs from 2024 to 2029 and is aligned with Angola Vision 2050 and the National Development Plan 2023-2027.
The Framework
A membership rather than a donor relationship
Member, Not Recipient
Angola joined the African Development Bank as a regional member country in 1980, with the first lending operations beginning in 1983. That status is the essential difference between this file and the bilateral ones: Angola is a shareholder in the institution that lends to it, with a seat in its governance. Cumulative loan and grant commitments had reached USD 3.36 billion by October 2025, built up over more than four decades.
The Country Strategy
The Bank's Country Strategy Paper for 2024 to 2029 is explicitly aligned with Angola's own long-term strategy, Angola Vision 2050, and with the National Development Plan for 2023 to 2027. Its stated objective is to accelerate economic diversification and transformation while supporting the government's economic policy reform plan. Every operation described below is justified against that document.
Source: African Development Bank, Country Strategy Paper 2024-2029
Representation
The Bank maintains a country office in Luanda under resident representative Pietro Toigo, whose remit also covers São Tomé and Príncipe. Unlike an embassy, the office both negotiates with government and supervises implementation, which is why the resident representative is the figure who announces new financing publicly.
Source: Angop, May 2026
The Portfolio
Growing, and unusually broad in sector coverage
Size and Spread
The active portfolio stood at USD 1.45 billion in October 2025, when a newly appointed executive director toured projects in the country. By May 2026 the resident representative put it at USD 1.7 billion. It covers energy, water and sanitation, transport, agriculture, finance, social programmes, science and technology, and environment — a spread wider than any single bilateral partner maintains in Angola.
The Bank's Reading
The Bank's own economic outlook explains the emphasis on diversification. Real GDP growth slowed to 3.1 per cent in 2025 from 5.0 per cent in 2024 as international oil prices fell, with oil activity contracting by 3.2 per cent and agriculture, communications and mining cushioning the decline. Real GDP per capita grew by just 0.1 per cent, constrained by rapid population growth. That last figure is the argument for everything in the portfolio.
Agriculture
The flagship operation, and the largest agricultural investment in the east
The Eastern Region Project
Approved in November 2025 and launched on 16 July 2026, the Eastern Region Agricultural Value Chain Development Project combines USD 211.4 million from the Bank with USD 100 million from the Angolan government, for a total of USD 311.4 million. It runs for five years, from 2026 to 2031, implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry under Minister Isaac dos Anjos. Six provinces are covered: Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul, Moxico, Moxico Leste, Cuando and Cubango.
The Targets
The project aims to reach around 240,000 farming households, roughly 1.2 million people, with women expected to make up about 55 per cent of direct beneficiaries. It anticipates some 7,500 direct jobs, at least half for women and a third for young people. Around 400 kilometres of feeder roads are to be rehabilitated to connect farming communities to markets. Supported crops include cereals, beans, soybeans, groundnuts, cassava, coffee, cocoa and palm oil, with particular emphasis on rice and wheat.
Source: fundsforNGOs, August 2026
Why the East
Four of the six provinces sit inside the Lobito Corridor Economic Zone, which converts what would otherwise be a domestic food security programme into a regional trade proposition. The Bank's stated ambition is for Angola's eastern provinces to emerge as major suppliers to southern African markets rather than merely feeding themselves.
The Italian Component
The operation carries EUR 20 million of co-financing from the Rome Process Financing Facility under Italy's Piano Mattei, and represents the first partnership between the Bank and the Italian government around the Lobito Corridor. It is a useful marker of how bilateral money increasingly arrives in Angola through multilateral channels rather than directly.
Energy
Reform dialogue first, connections second
Benguela Electrification
BENPRO, the Benguela Electrification Project, uses results-based financing, tying disbursements to measurable outputs such as household connections and transmission lines rather than to expenditure. The Bank cites experience in Mozambique, Rwanda, Egypt and Morocco as evidence that the modality accelerates delivery. It complements the Bank's ESEEP operation, which is upgrading transmission and installing prepaid meters.
The Sector Problem
The Bank convened its Africa Energy Market Place platform in Luanda in October 2023 to identify what blocks the sector. The findings were structural: the tariff framework, isolated and limited grid networks, and the market framework itself. The conclusion was blunt — Angola's renewable independent power producer procurement framework cannot succeed until the liquidity and efficiency problems running through the whole power value chain are addressed first.
Source: Africa Energy Portal, citing the Angola Country Strategy Paper 2024-2029
Working Alongside Others
The Bank describes its energy operations as complementing those of the World Bank, JICA, the French development agency, the European Investment Bank and the European Union. In Angola's power sector, no single lender acts alone, and reading any one of them in isolation overstates its role.
The Lobito Corridor
Financing both ends of the same route
The Angolan Side
In May 2026 the resident representative announced that USD 300 million had been made available for the corridor, speaking at the close of the third Angola-EU Business Forum in Luanda, which drew around 900 participants under the theme of moving from dialogue to concrete investment. He indicated that further financing was under consideration within the same year for the corridor's effective operationalisation.
Source: Angop, May 2026
The Zambian Side
In August 2026 the Bank approved a USD 255 million loan and a USD 10 million grant for Zambia's participation in the corridor, covering agriculture alongside transport, energy and trade facilitation. Financing both ends of the route is something no bilateral partner is positioned to do, and it is the clearest illustration of what a regional institution adds.
Source: Ecofin Agency, August 2026
Entrepreneurship and Skills
A USD 120 million joint investment involving the Bank, the Angolan government and the European Union is already supporting entrepreneurship along the corridor. The agricultural project also connects to youth schemes including the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation Enable Youth Compact and the Lobito Corridor-Angola TVET Youth Employment Project, which sits alongside the European Union's vocational training programme on the same route.
Editor's Note
Compiled 6 September 2026, principally from African Development Bank press releases, project documentation and country pages.
Four caveats. Portfolio figures are given at the dates stated: USD 1.45 billion in October 2025 and USD 1.7 billion in May 2026 reflect growth over that period rather than a contradiction between sources. Cumulative approvals are also reported inconsistently across the Bank's own pages, at USD 2.95 billion in an older country page and USD 3.36 billion in October 2025; the more recent figure is used here. The USD 300 million corridor figure comes from remarks by the resident representative reported by the Angolan state agency, not from a Bank press release, and the composition of that financing was not specified. And all figures throughout are approvals and commitments rather than disbursements.