Speaking to Lusa, the honorary consul of Indonesia in Angola, Vicente Inácio, said that the first Angolan business mission to that Asian country will participate in the 39th edition of ExpoTrade Indonesia, an international trade fair, which will take place from 9 to 13 October.
More than 20 Angolan businesspeople will participate in this event to seek partnerships and Indonesian investors for Angola, with a focus essentially on the agribusiness and industrial sectors, Vicente Inácio said.
"Indonesia is currently the number one exporter of palm oil to Angola and in the conversations we have been having with the Indonesian embassy in Angola, despite it being based in Windhoek (Namibia), there is a desire on the part of the Indonesian government to help Angola resume palm oil production and consequently move on to the industrialisation phase", he said.
The ExpoTrade Indonesia programme includes a seminar on the industrial production of palm oil, highlighted the honorary consul of Indonesia in Angola, stressing the intention of identifying other sectors of the medium-sized industry.
Angola, which established diplomatic relations with Indonesia in 2001, is also interested in finding partners in the area of rice production, similar to what it already does with the neighbouring Republic of Namibia.
"We in Indonesia can learn many good lessons for the development of our country, taking into account that from a climate point of view it is similar to our climate. Today, they are the fourth largest exporter of coffee in the world, while we were once the third largest, and if we want to one day recover, we can learn from Indonesia", he stressed.
There is currently an agreement between the Catholic Universities of Indonesia and Angola, which they intend to relaunch so that Angolan graduates can study at that institution in the Asian country.
According to Vicente Inácio, last year Angola appointed its extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador to Indonesia, Florêncio de Almeida, which is why the country is in the process of relaunching cooperation because it believes that it can "learn a lot from Indonesia".
"Indonesia has been providing assistance and cooperation to Namibia, where today Namibia is producing rice, something it did not do years ago, all of this supported by Indonesia's support", said the official, highlighting the textile potential of the Southeast Asian country, a sector in which Angola could find opportunities to cooperate, as well as in new technologies and tourism.
Although Indonesia has been producing oil since the 1970s, Angola exports crude oil and liquefied gas to that country, reaching a total of one billion dollars in 2022, of which 80 percent were these two products.
In contrast, Indonesia exported around 400 million dollars to Angola in 2022, half of which was palm oil and the rest soybean oil and soap.
There are currently no Indonesian companies in Angola, but some businesspeople who already have investments in Nigeria and Tanzania participated in the Luanda International Fair (Filda) in 2023 and this year to prospect the market, they expressed an interest in the local production of medicines and fish processing.
With a community of around 120 people, Indonesians in Angola are spread across the provinces of Luanda, Namibe and Bengo.
