João Lourenço, who has been working in the south of the country for two days, after the province of Huíla, visited this Friday the construction works of the dams of the Ndúe, on the river Caune, and Calucuve, on the river Cuvelai, in the province of Cunene, a of the provinces most affected by prolonged periods of drought.
Speaking to the press, the head of state said that the project is to be carried out, despite the country's economic and financial situation, admitting the need to mobilize resources to complete the programme, which also brings together the provinces of Huíla and Namibe.
"We have not shown signs of weakness and much less of retreat, this great program is to be carried out to the end, (...) it includes not only the provinces of Cunene and Huíla but also the province of Namibe", said João Lourenço , underlining that "the larger and more expensive projects are those to be built in Namibe province".
According to the President, six large dams will be built, "which will accumulate and retain rainwater", which "comes from the plateau, from Huíla in particular", and is lost in the sea.
"We are going to stop this natural course of water and take advantage of it, so they will start to do what this Calucuve and Ndúe project will also do", stressed João Lourenço.
These infrastructures, continued the head of state, will serve the population, cattle, poultry, "who knows, fishing too".
"The program is ambitious and we do not neglect the need to mobilize financial resources, so that we can gradually implement the program in its entirety. There is no retreat, what there may be is some difficulty in mobilizing resources as large as we are talking about, from very close to three billion dollars", he stressed.
"The execution of the entire program, which began with the Cafu project, passes through these two Ndúe and Calucuve, Cova do Leão, which will end up also serving the province of Huíla, other projects even for the city of Lubango, it's all in the same package, and these six large dams that have not yet started, but which we can count on, without fear of making a mistake, in the next four years we will have the program concluded", he added.
João Lourenço said that he visited the Cunene works with the aim also of encouraging the contractors, considering that his presence "accelerates the work a little more".
"Perhaps this dam will be finished before December of next year", said the President.
Asked about his impression of the province of Cunene, the head of state stressed that, both for that province in the south of Angola and for the country itself, there is still "a lot to do" to guarantee the economic and social development of the country.
"In order to guarantee the well-being of our populations, which is understandable if we consider that Angola was the victim of an armed conflict that lasted decades - there must not be another country in the world that has experienced a situation as bitter as ours, that were 27 consecutive years of war," he said.
João Lourenço underlined that the country has been at peace for 21 years, however, still not enough time to rebuild what was destroyed and to implement new projects from scratch, outside the framework of reconstruction.
