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Partnership

Angola  - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a United Nations agency set up in 1945 to fight hunger and improve how the world grows and shares food.

Its job is to help countries raise nutrition, grow and distribute food more efficiently, improve life in rural areas, and protect land, water, forests and fish for the future. "Agriculture" here also means fisheries and forestry.

FAO collects and shares facts on food and farming, advises governments, sets common standards, and gives technical help when countries ask. It does not mainly deliver food aid—that is the World Food Programme's role.

Today FAO works toward four simple aims: better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, so everyone can eat well and no one is left behind.

The Relationship in Short

FAO has been in Angola longer than almost any other international partner. The country joined the organisation in 1977, two years after independence, and a country Representation followed in 1982 — while the civil war still had two decades to run. That history shapes the work: early interventions were emergency ones, resettling rural households and supplying inputs so food production could restart, and the shift to long-term development came only later.

The results over that span are real. Undernourishment fell from 64 per cent of the population in 1990-92 to 27 per cent in 2010-12, beating the Millennium Development Goal target of halving hunger. But drought has since undone much of it. Southern Angola has now endured five consecutive drought cycles, the worst in forty years, and around 31 per cent of the population faced severe food insecurity in 2023, with stunting affecting more than four in ten children under five.

Much of FAO's current work is less visible than emergency response, and arguably matters more. It is supporting Angola's first agricultural census, conducted with the National Statistics Institute and the agriculture ministry, and Angola can now report on the hunger goal using its own measurement rather than external estimates. In a country where the UN reckons nearly half the data needed to track the Sustainable Development Goals is missing, building the measurement system is a precondition for everything else.

Alongside that sit the field programmes — farmer field schools, agroecology centres, drought recovery in the south — and a large inland aquaculture project across five northern provinces. A detail from 2018 captures the direction of travel: the government and FAO agreed to convert the Representation into a Partnership and Liaison Office, giving Angola a greater role in the organisation's own work rather than simply receiving its assistance. What follows sets out the partnership, the problem, the data work, the field programmes, aquaculture, and the policy role.

AngolaExpert · UN Agency File

FAO & Angola

Updated 6 September 2026 Food security · Data · Drought · Aquaculture

In Brief

  • Angola joined FAO in 1977 and a country Representation was established in 1982, making this one of the longest continuous UN partnerships in the country.
  • The current Country Programming Framework runs from 2024 to 2028, published in Luanda in 2025 and aligned with the UN Cooperation Framework of the same period.
  • Undernourishment fell from 64 per cent of the population in 1990-92 to 27 per cent in 2010-12, exceeding the Millennium Development Goal target.
  • FAO is supporting Angola's first agricultural census, conducted with the National Statistics Institute and the agriculture ministry.
  • Angola now reports on SDG 2 using the food insecurity experience scale, which it could not previously do.

The Partnership

Four decades, and a change of office status few noticed

Origins

Angola joined FAO in 1977 and a country Representation was established in 1982. Because of the twenty-seven-year civil war, early interventions were emergency work: resettling vulnerable rural households and providing agricultural inputs so food production could resume. The shift towards recovery and longer-term development came later, and FAO marked its own eightieth anniversary alongside more than forty years of partnership with Angola through an Open Day and exhibition in the country.

Source: FAO, Angola partnership brief

A Change of Status

In February 2018 the government and FAO agreed to transform the FAO Representation into a Partnership and Liaison Office. The stated purpose was to give Angola a greater role in the organisation's own work and programmes rather than simply to receive assistance, while continuing support for family farming. It is a small institutional detail that signals something larger: Angola is treated as a middle-income partner, not a relief case.

Source: FAO, Angola partnership brief

The Current Framework

FAO's Country Programming Framework for 2024 to 2028 was published in Luanda in 2025, matching the period of the UN Cooperation Framework. Within that framework FAO participates in both the People pillar, on food security and nutrition, and the Prosperity pillar, on economic diversification and sustainable food systems. The country office is headed by Representative Gherda Barreto Cajina.

Source: FAO, Angola Country Programming Framework 2024-2028

The Problem

Historic progress, and a reversal driven by drought

What Improved

The long-run record is genuinely positive. Undernourishment fell from 64 per cent of the population in 1990-92 to 27 per cent in 2010-12, going beyond the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015. Crop production grew sharply over the same period as the country recovered from war.

Source: FAO Newsroom

What Has Not

An estimated 31.2 per cent of the population suffered severe food insecurity in 2023, and stunting affected around 43.6 per cent of children under five. The south has faced five consecutive drought cycles, the worst recorded in forty years, with the 2021-2022 episode affecting 1.32 million people across Huíla, Namibe and Cunene.

Source: UNSDCF Angola 2024-2028

The Current Emergency

The prolonged drought, worsened by El Niño, has produced below-average harvests, lost income and assets, and water scarcity. WFP puts the number of people needing assistance at around 2.2 million, of whom 1.8 million are food insecure and 1.3 million require nutrition support. FAO's emergency response runs through a Technical Cooperation Programme with the government aimed at restoring livelihoods in the south rather than distributing food.

Source: World Food Programme, Angola

Data and Evidence

The least visible part of the work, and arguably the most consequential

The Agricultural Census

FAO is working with the National Statistics Institute and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry on the first agricultural census ever conducted in Angola. In a country where the UN Cooperation Framework reports that nearly half the information needed to assess SDG targets is simply missing, establishing a baseline for the agricultural sector is a precondition for everything else on this page.

Source: Angop via allAfrica, February 2024

Reporting SDG 2

Angola is now able to report on Sustainable Development Goal 2 using the food insecurity experience scale, which it previously could not. That change means the country's hunger figures come from its own measurement rather than from external estimation, which matters both for policy and for how Angola is assessed internationally.

Source: Angop via allAfrica, February 2024

Food Balance Sheets

From 8 to 20 March 2026, FAO ran a Food Balance Sheets training and compilation workshop in Luanda with the agriculture ministry, under a European Union-funded programme. Food balance sheets are the statistical instrument that tracks what a country produces, imports, exports and consumes, and without them food policy is guesswork.

Source: FAO Angola

In the Field

Farmer field schools, agroecology and the provinces

Farmer Field Schools

The farmer field school is FAO's core delivery method in Angola, a network of community-level training groups that has proved adaptable well beyond agriculture. During the pandemic the same network carried health and safety messaging in local languages, and taught farmers to produce handmade soap both to meet local demand and to create a new income source.

Source: Africa Renewal

Agroecology

With the Ministry of Environment, FAO has launched an effort to revitalise Agroecological Centres and Agroecology Farmer Field Schools in the provinces, building the skills of farmers, agricultural technicians and community leaders in sustainable land, water and food production practices.

Source: FAO Angola

Presence Outside Luanda

FAO maintains teams in the provinces, including in Huíla in the drought-affected south. It took part in the Agricultural and Forestry Fair in Luena, Moxico province, marking the official opening of Angola's 2025/2026 agricultural year — a province that also sits at the centre of the eastern agricultural push financed by the African Development Bank.

Source: FAO Angola

Aquaculture

A large project in five northern provinces, and an unfamiliar sector

The Project

Under the GEF-8 Food Systems Integrated Program, FAO is working to transform inland aquaculture in Angola into a productive, inclusive and environmentally sustainable sector. It covers Uíge, Bengo, Bié, Cuanza Norte and Malanje, together more than 266,000 square kilometres and around 64 per cent of Angola's family-based aquaculture units. Fish is a key source of nutrition and income in the north, a fact that sits outside the usual coastal fisheries framing of Angola.

Source: FAO, Food Systems Integrated Program

The Approach

Activities focus on environmentally responsible aquaculture practices, stronger governance and spatial planning, and improved access to finance, markets and technology for small-scale and family producers. The stated aim is climate-smart and ecosystem-based production that reduces environmental pressure while improving food safety and quality, in a context of biodiversity loss and soil and water degradation intensified by climate change.

Source: FAO, Food Systems Integrated Program

Policy and Investment

Where FAO acts as broker rather than implementer

The Investment Plan

Angola used an FAO forum to present a business plan seeking investment of approximately one billion dollars across the fishing, livestock and flatland sectors, framed explicitly around boosting the eastern and Lobito corridors. This is FAO in its convening role rather than as a funder, and the plan should be read as a prospectus rather than as committed finance.

Source: Angop via allAfrica, February 2024

Commitments in Rome

Angola presented ten commitments in Rome to transform its food system and update the national food security strategy. Alongside that, FAO has worked with the ministries of Economy and Planning and of Industry and Commerce on three plans to accelerate small-scale agro-processing aimed at women and young people.

Source: Angop via allAfrica, February 2024

Parliament

FAO has also taken the argument to the National Assembly, convening a workshop with development partners on how parliament and international cooperation can support food and nutrition security. Given that Angola's education and health budget shares both sit below international commitments, the budgetary argument is where much of this ultimately rests.

Source: FAO Angola

Editor's Note

Compiled 6 September 2026 from FAO publications and the FAO Angola newsroom, supplemented by the UN Cooperation Framework, WFP country material and Angolan press reporting.

Five caveats. The Country Programming Framework 2024-2028 is confirmed as published, but its priority areas could not be retrieved from the public catalogue record, so they are not summarised here. The 2018 agreement to convert the Representation into a Partnership and Liaison Office is documented, though the office is still referred to as a Representation in later material, and the current designation should be checked. The one billion dollar figure is an investment target presented by the government, not FAO financing. Food insecurity figures come from different sources and reference years and are not directly comparable. And the Representative named here has held the post since at least 2020, so it is worth confirming before publication.