The Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, will visit Angola in June, at the invitation of the Angolan President, to sign the new strategic cooperation package, which is being closed by the two governments.
At the end of a meeting with João Lourenço, on the sidelines of the 36th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU), António Costa said that the meeting also aimed to assess how the two countries can “help give new impetus to this relationship between Europe and Africa.
“It was important for us to take stock of the different bilateral issues that we always have under development, to set a date for my next visit to Angola and to be able to sign the new strategic cooperation package,” António Costa explained at the end of the meeting.
As for the specific date, António Costa referred this information to the Angolan President, although he said that “it will be in early June.
“The previous agreements are being finalized, the technical problems that still blocked some of the financing lines” and “Angola’s Finance Minister was in Lisbon in December” and “our Finance Minister will be next month in Luanda” to deal with these matters.
Until the visit, “from a technical point of view, the programs will be resolved” for the “new strategic cooperation plan for the next three years,” he added.
In terms of bilateral relations and Portugal’s role as Africa’s intermediary with the European Union, António Costa also highlighted applications for international funding.
“One of the areas of work that we think we can develop with Angola in the future is a major logistics corridor between the Dande basin and the port of Sines,” he explained.
Last week “we presented this application for funding in the framework of the European Union, in the great strategic investment program that the European Union has, identifying this [project] as a great strategic corridor” for the two continents, he added.
At the mouth of the River Dande, the government of Luanda wants to build an Ocean Terminal that will serve as the country’s logistics platform and as a link to the interior of Southern Africa.