João Lourenço, who was speaking in a joint communication with his counterpart from Cape Verde, José Maria Neves, at the end of the official talks, considered that satisfying only the need for an air connection between the two countries "is a very small ambition".
"It needs to be resolved, but it is quite small", said the President, noting that the cooperation ties between Angola and Cape Verde should be raised to the level of strategic cooperation.
"When you ask how far we intend to go with these cooperation ties between our two countries, I must say that the sky is the limit, we intend to raise our friendship and cooperation relations to a level of strategic cooperation," he replied to journalists.
The resumption of the air connection between Angola and Cape Verde was one of the points in the official talks, during José Maria Neves' first official visit to Angola.
The President guaranteed, on the occasion, that the connection between the two capitals, Luanda and Praia "and, eventually, to Ilha de Sal should happen immediately", referring that work is already underway in this area.
"At the level of both governments, we have been working for some time now towards the resumption of Luanda-Praia flights and eventually Luanda-Sal, passing through São Tomé or not, but not just to stay there," he noted.
For João Lourenço, the resumption of the air connection between Luanda and Praia is also intended to connect countries in the region to West Africa, where Cape Verde is located, to Europe and the United States of America.
"Our ambition in terms of civil aviation is not only to connect the two capitals, but from Praia we go, in addition, reaching West African countries, this will happen soon, I don't know when, but in the next few years months this will already become a reality," he pointed out.
Questioned whether the sentence by António Agostinho Neto, the first Angolan President, according to which "the most important thing is to solve the people's problem" remains current in the actions of the two governments, João Lourenço referred that the sentence "remains current in the actions" of his executive.
José Maria Neves, elected President of Cape Verde in October 2021 and in office since November, carries out his first State visit to Angola between 9 and 12 January.
The Angolan head of State praised the visit of his Cape Verdean counterpart to his country, having guaranteed to work towards "taking the greatest possible advantage of the potential existing between both countries in the various domains of the economy".
"We are working more recently on an air and maritime agreement, since our flag company holds air assets, in some way idle, which would be better used and Cape Verde holds licenses that allow it to fly to countries that Angola does not fly," he stressed.
Cape Verde, underlined João Lourenço, is a country that "has invested a lot in man and we would like to take advantage of the possibility that Cape Verde gives us, for example, in the hotel and tourism sector, to see if Angola can reach the levels that Cape Verde has in that domain".
"Angola has dormant potentials, they need to be explored, but for this to happen, the human factor is important and we would like to drink from your experience, but there are other areas that we are exploring at government level for the benefit of both countries", he noted.
During the talks, the President of Cape Verde, José Maria Neves, invited his counterpart to visit the island country, an invitation accepted by João Lourenço.
"I must declare here that I gladly accept to carry out this visit on the dates that our diplomacies establish", said the Angolan President.
José Maria Neves will also speak this Monday at the headquarters of the Angolan parliament and will continue his agenda tomorrow with a visit to public institutions and a late afternoon meeting with the Cape Verdean community residing in Angola.
