A speech made yes­ter­day by Angolan Pres­i­dent Jose Eduardo dos San­tos claimed that 60 per­cent of the coun­tries pop­u­la­tion lives in poverty. Pres­i­dent dos San­tos blames a long civil war and a his­tory of colo­nial­ism for the Angola’s woes.

From Reuters we read a quote from Pres­i­dent dos San­tos and some goals he hopes will help the coun­try climb out of poverty.

The government’s top pri­or­ity is to end wide­spread poverty, he said, blam­ing part of Angola’s con­di­tion on its colo­nial past and a civil war that erupted imme­di­ately after inde­pen­dence from Por­tu­gal in 1975 and which only ended in 2002.

Since then, the rul­ing MPLA has been rebuild­ing Angola on the back of record oil exports and multi-billion dol­lar loans from China. But Angola still ranks as one of the world’s 18 most graft-ridden nations, accord­ing to Trans­parency International.

Poverty has remained roughly the same since the end of the 27-year civil war, when the World Bank said almost two-thirds of Angolans lived on less than $2 a day.

Dos San­tos is bank­ing on a $1.4 bil­lion loan from the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund — designed to bol­ster Angola’s for­eign exchange reserves and social spend­ing — and ris­ing oil prices and exports to improve the lives of ordi­nary Angolans.

Angola rivals Nige­ria as Africa’s biggest oil pro­ducer. The gov­ern­ment is expected to spend almost a third of its $36 bil­lion 2010 bud­get on health, edu­ca­tion and hous­ing. It also plans to build one mil­lion new homes for the poor in five years.

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