Dionísio da Fonseca signed a cooperation protocol with the Minister of Territorial Cohesion of Portugal, Ana Abrunhosa, which encompasses the training and qualification of staff, institutional cooperation, development of support instruments, follow-up and monitoring of the decentralization process and common regulation.
The document also includes the sharing of experiences in the field of implementing economic and social cohesion programmes, as well as the definition of public policies for territorial development, promotion of equity and sustainability in local development.
"We have major challenges for the 2022-2027 mandate, one of which is the challenge of municipalizing the State and another that of institutionalizing local authorities. in the implementation of local authorities", said the minister.
Dionísio da Fonseca also expressed the desire to gather Portuguese experience with regard "fundamentally" to the issue of improving the living conditions of the Angolan population.
"We also intend to rely on your experience in the field of policies to reduce local asymmetries, increasingly valuing the interior", said the official, stressing that the country has a very considerable rural population and is also witnessing a large rural exodus.
According to the minister, the Government intends to increasingly bring services to rural communities, valuing the interior by improving the provision of services in communities, relying on Portugal's experience in this field.
In turn, the Minister of Territorial Cohesion of Portugal, Ana Abrunhosa, highlighted the vast Portuguese experience in municipalization, in the administration of the territory, in the delivery of competences from the central state to the municipalities.
"This protocol aims, as brotherly countries, at mutual learning, a path side by side, where we can share our vast experience, in recent years we have sought to accentuate the competences that we have passed on to the municipalities in the certainty that unites us a concern which is that when our countries grow, all people share in that growth and development, regardless of where they are born, where they live and where they work", he stressed.
Speaking to the press, the Portuguese official reinforced the vast Portuguese experience in the field of local authorities, namely in terms of territory management, the exercise of competences that ceased to be of the Government and passed to local authorities.
"The existence of autarchy, this institutionalization of autarchy, is a clear sign of a democratic country, where democracy is mature and conducive to greater citizen participation in public life", she said.
Ana Abrunhosa underlined that there is already a participatory budget, which the Government, through the Ministry of Territory Administration, exercises and specifically Portugal can share its experience "of what went well, what went less well".
"Now there is one thing I want to convey: there are no magic recipes, we have to share experiences and take into account the specific reality of the countries and that is what territorial cohesion is. Cohesion is adapting the measures to the reality of the territories", he said.
According to the minister, "there is nothing more wrong than doing politics without taking into account the people and the specific problems of the territory".
Angola is preparing to institutionalize local authorities, with the legislation for the holding of the first municipal elections in parliament to be approved.
