The information was provided this Tuesday during the workshop on Residual Risk Management (Demining) by Adriano Gonçalves, responsible for the commercial exchange area at the agency.
According to Adriano Gonçalves, Angola is still considered one of the countries most affected by landmines in the world and the country most affected in Africa.
"This label of being one of the most mined countries in the world and the most mined in Africa can only be convincingly changed through regular reporting on the progress made by the country in major forums, namely the Ottawa convention, following international and national standards , as well as the sharing of information in accordance with article 6 of the same Convention", he said in his opening speech of the event.
Adriana Gonçalves highlighted that in the recent past, all the provinces of the country were affected, with a smaller or larger number of mined areas, but currently due to the great work of land liberation that has been carried out over the years, as well as the improved updating of the central database, which regularly reconciles data with operators, there are already provinces without known mined areas, namely Malanje and Huambo.
"Doing an analysis on the level of land release, per year, that we have been doing, which is 10 square kilometers, we would have a projection of up to 2028, this would take 70 square kilometers, in a reference of ten square kilometers per year, it would be another seven years, which leads us to conclude that Angola would be free of known mined areas in 2028", he stressed.
The official stressed that "if a significant increase in financing to operators is made, which is estimated at around 200 million dollars, this would allow an increase in the capacity to release land, taking into account the guarantee of financing already made by the Angolan government and donors, Angola would have the possibility to comply with the signing of the Maputo Declaration of 2014, in which all States party to the Ottawa Convention declared that by 2025 they would be free of known mined areas," he said.
