"From this visit here to the province of Bié [center of the country] we learned a great lesson and we learned, above all, from the humble families in the countryside, who, with their work, with their production, are teaching us how to fight hunger, poverty, working", said, this Thursday, João Lourenço, in Bié.
For the President, who was speaking to journalists at the end of his two-day visit to that province, the peasants of the nine municipalities in the province of Bié are teaching "a great lesson" that, to have food on the table, it is necessary to work the field.
João Lourenço considered that, while many intellectuals, politicians, "some ill-intentioned" people propagate the idea that to have food on the table and to lower the price of products, a decree from the President of the Republic is enough or it is enough to increase the volume of imports of these same products, the peasants are "giving a great lesson, saying that the way forward is to work the field".
"This is the way, let's be humble to learn from the peasants this practical lesson that they are giving us", he declared, highlighting that the agricultural fair he visited on Wednesday, his first day of work in Bié, showed that the region "is producing a little bit of everything".
One million, three hundred thousand people in the country, four percent of the population, faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023 and the situation is expected to worsen in 2024, according to the World Food Crisis Report, released last April.
Civil society actors and opposition political parties repeatedly criticize the "high levels of hunger and poverty" in the country, which they say have been worsened by the high prices of basic food products.
After his arrival in Bié, João Lourenço visited an agricultural fair in the city of Cuito and then met with the provincial government, where he was informed about the socioeconomic situation of the province.
This Thursday, on his second and last day in Bié, he traveled to the municipality of Chinguar, where he visited a farm and took part in the start of the wheat harvesting campaign and then visited a wheat processing industry and the Production Center of Forestry Seedlings, assigned to the Social Security Institute of the Angolan Armed Forces, in the municipality of Catabola.
At balance time, he praised the work carried out by agricultural businessman Alfeu Vinevala, responsible for wheat production in that province, noting that he is also giving opportunities to surrounding communities to produce small plots of wheat.
"He distributes the seeds and buys their production from the peasants, so this will make the peasants of that community increase their wheat production areas from year to year, because they know that everything they produce has a market", pointed out João Lourenço.
The head of state also ensured a continued commitment to the construction and maintenance of road infrastructure, whether paved or dirt, for the flow of agricultural production, considering peasants' complaints about access roads legitimate.
He also guaranteed that the construction of the fertilizer factory in the city of Soyo, province of Zaire, in the north of the country, will be completed "soon", which should fully cover the country's needs or at least supply a very large portion of imports of fertilizers.
