ADF STAFF
Angola has spent most of its time as an independent nation at war. It knows the cost of conflict and the dividends of peace.
Now, more than 20 years after a peace agreement was signed to end the country’s civil war, Angola is trying to export peace across Africa through mediation and peacekeeping efforts.
“We have learnt all those lessons, and we think that a country cannot develop with war. You develop a country with peace,” Samwel Abilio Sianga, Angola’s ambassador to Kenya, told Nation.Africa.
Angola’s 27-year civil war killed nearly 1 million people and displaced 4 million. By the time a peace agreement was signed in 2002, most of the country did not have access to drinking water and nearly one in three children died before age 5.
“We had separated families; we had destroyed our country, and we could not communicate with one another,” Sianga said. “That is because bridges were destroyed, no hospitals, power supply, everything,”
Today, Angola wants to be a force for peacemaking. Every two years the country hosts the Pan-African Forum for the Culture of Peace, an event sponsored by the U.N. and the African Union to promote cultural exchanges and explore strategies for violence prevention and mediation. The most recent forum took place November 22 to 24.
Angolan President João Lourenço serves as the AU’s lead mediator for the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In July 2022, representatives from Angola, the DRC and Rwanda gathered in the country to sign the “Luanda Roadmap for Peace.” The road map sought to open dialogue and normalize relations between the DRC and Rwanda, create the conditions for refugees to return to their homes, and facilitate the withdrawal of the M23 rebel group from occupied territories.
“We’ve reached to a point where we cannot stop; we have to take the next step. And this is what we are doing; we are engaged and continuing,” Lourenço said during an October 2023 state visit to Kenya. “We will not give in so that eventually we can achieve the much-awaited peace in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and also to reestablish the good friendship and cooperation relations that used to exist between the two sister countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.”
The road map calls for the cantonment of M23 rebel groups. Once this happens, Angola has pledged to send 500 Soldiers to secure cantonment zones.
Lourenço conceded that the cantonment step of the road map has proved to be difficult. “We have achieved a ceasefire, now we need to get them into cantonment and start the process of disarmament and reintegration of these Congolese citizens into Congolese society,” he told France24 in May.
Angola also has played a lead role in the peace process in the Central African Republic by trying to bring parties in the troubled nation together and mediating disputes between the CAR and neighboring Chad.
In recognition of his efforts, Lourenço was named the AU’s “Champion of Peace and Reconciliation.”
During his annual State of the Nation speech in October, Lourenço urged Angolans to protect their hard-won peace.
“The current and future generations have a duty to their homeland to defend, protect and perpetuate this legacy, building a reconciled homeland, an unavoidable prerequisite for building an Angola for all,” he said.
The same month Angola hosted the annual assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a more than 100-year-old organization that brought together parliamentary leaders from 150 countries to discuss issues of common concern.
IPU President and Portuguese member of parliament Duarte Pacheco called Angola “the right place to talk about peace.”
“Angolans know how fundamental peace is to ensuring the economic and social development that we all desire for our countries,” Pacheco said. “With peace everything is possible, with peace it is possible to have hope again and believe that the future has opportunities.”