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Today’s edition is focused on the road to the 2027 elections, unquestionably the biggest issue overshadowing all others in Angola right now, and for the coming year.
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IN FOCUS
Angola’s 2027 election has already begun
The MPLA succession dispute, a legal challenge over vote-counting technology, and pressure on civil society are testing the institutions that will shape the vote’s credibility
Angola will not hold its next general election until 2027, but the conditions under which it will be fought are already being established. The dispute over the MPLA leadership, a court challenge to the choice of the company providing election technology, and growing concern over the treatment of government critics may appear unrelated. Together, however, they add up to significant doubts over whether Angola can enter the next election with broadly accepted rules, credible institutions and sufficient political space for a genuinely competitive contest.
The immediate focus is the MPLA. Higino Carneiro’s challenge to the rejection of his leadership candidacy has reached the Constitutional Court, while João Lourenço remains firmly in control of the party machinery ahead of the December congress. Carneiro may ultimately fail, but his persistence has exposed the difficulty the MPLA continues to have in accommodating internal competition. This matters beyond the governing party because Lourenço cannot constitutionally seek another term as President of the Republic in 2027. The MPLA must therefore decide not only who leads the party, but who will inherit its political project and contest an election in which its continued dominance can no longer be assumed.
Whoever emerges will face an electorate very different from the one over which the MPLA established its long supremacy. Much of Angola’s population is young, with little or no memory of the civil war. For these voters, the historical legitimacy of the liberation movements matters less than employment, incomes, education, healthcare and prospects for a better life. As Cláudio Silva argued on this week’s Angola Briefing, this generational shift helps explain the growing distance between the MPLA and younger urban voters and the appeal of UNITA leader Adalberto Costa Júnior. The 2022 election already demonstrated the scale of the governing party’s challenge in Luanda and other urban centres.
Yet the credibility of 2027 will depend on much more than the identities of the candidates. The Liberal Party’s challenge to the award of the election technology and logistics contract to INDRA highlights longstanding concerns about confidence in electoral administration. The central issue should not be reduced to the Spanish company itself. It is whether the National Electoral Commission can demonstrate that procurement, technology, transmission and aggregation of results are transparent and subject to meaningful scrutiny. Questions that can be answered before the election should not be allowed to become disputes about legitimacy after it.
The same principle applies to political space. Civil-society organisations are already protesting against what they describe as the use of the justice system against government critics. It would be wrong to assume that every arrest or prosecution is politically motivated, but an election cannot command broad confidence if opposition parties, activists, journalists and ordinary citizens believe that criticism or political organisation exposes them to intimidation. Nor is electoral competition equal if public media remain overwhelmingly associated with the government while opposition voices struggle for comparable access, particularly outside Luanda.
There is still time to address these weaknesses. The courts can demonstrate their independence by resolving political and electoral disputes promptly and transparently. The CNE can publish more information about its procedures and permit credible independent scrutiny of election technology. Public media can provide meaningful space for competing political voices, while the authorities can demonstrate that peaceful organisation and criticism will be protected rather than treated as threats to the state.
None of this favours the MPLA, UNITA or any other party. It favours an election whose result Angolans can trust. That distinction will become increasingly important as 2027 approaches, particularly if the contest is close. The election has not yet formally begun, but the contest over its credibility already has.
The news summaries regarding the developments discussed in the leader above, can be read below 👇
Also in today’s Angola Briefing:
Unitel outage exposes Angola’s dependence on one network (Expansão, Angola24Horas, Angola24Horas)
State companies absorb USD352 million but return only USD83 million (Expansão, Expansão)
Carneiro takes rejected MPLA leadership bid to court (Angola24Horas, Novo Jornal, MPLA)
INDRA contract dispute puts CNE procurement under scrutiny (O País, Angola24Horas, CNE)
Vigil turns attention to pressure on government critics (Lusa/RTP, DW, Angola24Horas)
Unitel outage exposes Angola’s dependence on one network
Sources: Expansão, Novo Jornal, Angola24Horas, Angola24Horas, Angola24Horas, CIAM/Jornal de Angola
A cyberattack on Unitel disrupted communications and digital services across Angola as the country’s dominant mobile operator entered the stock market. Unitel serves about 20.8 million customers and controls roughly 76% of the market. UNITA has called for an independent audit, parliamentary hearings and a commission of inquiry, although no inquiry has been confirmed. Unitel has yet to publish a detailed account of the failure or its economic cost.
The outage exposed a weakness extending beyond Unitel’s systems. Customers who moved to Africell encountered an operator unable to absorb the sudden increase in demand, leaving Angola without effective redundancy in essential communications infrastructure. Partial privatisation has widened Unitel’s shareholder base without ending state control, making disclosure a test for regulators as well as the company. Parliament’s consideration of the Cybersecurity Law adds urgency, but stronger security powers should be accompanied by mandatory incident reporting, independent technical scrutiny and judicial oversight.
State companies absorb USD352 million but return USD83 million
Sources: Expansão, Expansão, Expansão, Expansão, Sonangol
Angola spent Kz320.9 billion, approximately USD352 million, recapitalising and subsidising state-owned companies in 2025, while receiving about USD83 million from the sector. The 78 companies that submitted accounts reported an aggregate profit of Kz949 billion. That result was heavily dependent on Sonangol and Unitel: without their combined profits, the sector would have recorded a loss of about Kz72 billion.
The headline profit obscures the financial weakness of much of the state-owned sector. It also leaves an important question unanswered: how much of the performance attributed to Sonangol and Unitel came from their principal operations rather than dividends, investments or asset holdings? Privatisation may be appropriate for some companies, but a sale alone will not correct weak governance or prevent a public monopoly from becoming a private one. The immediate priority is fuller disclosure of subsidies, returns and operating results, followed by company-specific decisions on restructuring, sale or closure.
Carneiro takes rejected MPLA leadership bid to court
Sources: Angola24Horas, Novo Jornal, Novo Jornal, Lusa, MPLA
Angola’s Constitutional Court has admitted Higino Carneiro’s challenge to the rejection of his candidacy for the MPLA leadership. The dispute concerns supporting forms that party officials allegedly found invalid or falsified, as well as Carneiro’s claim that the decision breached the MPLA’s electoral timetable. The party congress is scheduled for 9–10 December.
INDRA contract dispute puts CNE procurement under scrutiny
Sources: O País, Angola24Horas, CNE, Novo Jornal, Lusa/VerAngola
The Liberal Party has asked the Supreme Court to annul the award of the technological and logistics contract for the 2027 election to Spanish company INDRA. It alleges irregularities in the tender and a lack of transparency over the evaluation criteria. INDRA has meanwhile presented its implementation plan to the National Electoral Commission.
Vigil turns attention to pressure on government critics
Sources: Lusa/RTP, DW, Angola24Horas, Jornal Folha 8
Civil-society groups held a vigil in Luanda to demand the release of people they describe as political prisoners. Organisers accused the justice system of being used against government critics and called for an end to politically motivated detention. The authorities accuse detainees cited by activists of offences including rebellion, terrorism and public incitement to crime.
