Newspapers in Angola
According to MILITARYNOUS.COM, Angola is a country located in Africa. The spread of daily newspapers in Angola is very small (11 newspaper excl. Per 1,000 residents, 2000). In Angola, four daily newspapers are published in Portuguese with a total edition of 120,000 copies. (1995). The largest is O Jornal de Angola (40,000 copies), founded in 1881. The press was nationalized in 1976 and the news agency is state-controlled.
Radio (Rádio Nacional de Angola) and TV (Televisão Popular de Angola) are state, as is the news agency Angola Prensa (ANGOP). The radio broadcasts in three channels, one of which is in local languages. Television broadcasts started in 1975 and are broadcast in a channel that is estimated to reach 60% of the population. There are 74 radio and 19 TV receivers per 1,000 residents (2000).
Culture
According to ALLUNITCONVERTERS, the most important cultural event in Angola is the Carnival in February each year. The celebration engages the country for a week and has a long history.
Music and dance play a major role in the many Angolan cultures. The rich music scene has deep historical roots in its own country, but influences also come from, for example, West Africa and Brazil. Through music and dance – such as the kudoron so popular outside Angola in the mid-2010s – the Angolans have over the years had the opportunity to express things that would otherwise be banned in society, such as criticism of the corrupt regime. In northern Angola there is a rich sculptural art with roots in the old kingdom (see Older history). The puffins and chokewomen also have impressive art traditions.
The country’s first president after independence, Agostinho Neto, was a featured lyricist. Together with poets such as Geraldo Bessa Victor and Mário António, Neto has depicted the gaps between poor and rich in Angola.
Otherwise, it was José Luandino Vieira who in the 1950s gave modern Angolan literature its breakthrough. Artur Pestana dos Santos, who writes under the pseudonym Pepetela, is one of the country’s most important writers. José Eduardo Agualusa is award winning in the UK and several of his books have been translated into Swedish. Ondjaki (pseudonym of Ndalu de Almeida, born 1977) has been awarded numerous awards and is considered one of Africa’s most promising Portuguese-speaking young writers. His novels Whistler and Good Morning Comrades have been translated into Swedish.
Mass Media
State-owned mass media dominate Angola’s media landscape. Officially, press freedom is guaranteed, but in practice the media lives under tight state control, both administratively and financially, forcing journalists and editors to self-censor.
Conditions for the media improved somewhat after the end of the war in 2002 and the independent media became increasingly bold and outspoken. In 2006, Parliament adopted a new media law which, despite shortcomings, meant a step towards increased media freedom, including for privately owned etheric media.
Recently, several journalists have been murdered under unclear circumstances. Others have been subjected to abuse, censorship, threats and reprisals of various kinds. The journalist Rafael Marques at Rádio Despertar (Awake), funded by the opposition party Unita, was arrested in the summer of 2015 when he was about to report from a peaceful demonstration. Police surrounded the radio station’s premises to prevent other journalists from reporting on the demonstration in Marque’s place. Just before that, Marques had been sentenced to six months’ conditional imprisonment for slander after writing a book on corruption and human rights violations in Angola’s diamond industry (see Calendar). The fact that the punishment did not get harsher may have been due to great international attention.
It is a criminal offense to insult the president and government institutions. Angola was ranked 123 out of 180 countries in the organization Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2015.
The only daily newspaper is the state-owned and government- friendly O Jornal de Angola (Angola newspaper). Independent weekly newspapers such as Agora (Nu) and Folha 8 (Sheet 8) have, however, increased their publication in recent years and not least offer on the Internet alternatives to the state-controlled information.
The printed newspapers mainly reach an elite in the capital Luanda. There are some regional newspapers with irregular publishing, but most Angolans get their information via radio. The state-owned radio company Rádio Nacional de Angola dominates the ether with channels in several indigenous languages and coverage across virtually the entire country. The Catholic Church’s often government- critical Rádio Ecclésia and the independent commercial radio station Luanda Antena Comercial broadcast in the Luanda area. One goal of the new Media Act of 2006 was to break the radio and TV monopoly, but privately owned radio channels have sometimes found it difficult to obtain broadcast permits from the authorities.
The state-owned television company Televisão Pública de Angola has two channels. In addition, there is also a pay-TV channel with Portuguese and Brazilian programs.
Angola had 4.3 million Internet users in 2014. The population was 22.1 million that year.
FACTS – MASS MEDIA
Percentage of the population using the internet
14 percent (2017)
Number of mobile subscriptions per 100 residents
43 (2018)
2012
October
Government investment fund is established
A government investment fund is set up and receives start-up capital of US $ 5 billion. In practice, the fund will collect the surplus from oil exports by model from the Norwegian Oil Fund (see Finance and Norway, Natural Resources and Energy).
August
Dos Santos becomes the country’s president
Already before the election, Unita has accused MPLA of irregularities, such as manipulation of voting lengths and more. Unita carries out its own vote. However, the election is largely approved by the African Union (AU) observers, while some election observers from the West complain that they have not been given access to the polling stations. The MPLA’s electoral victory means that dos Santos is re-elected president, as the new constitution stipulates that the leader of parliament’s largest party automatically becomes head of state and government.
MPLA wins parliamentary elections
In the parliamentary elections, MPLA gets almost 72 percent of the vote, while Unita wins just under 19 percent. The newly formed Casa-CE receives 6 percent. The result means that MPLA loses 16 seats to Unita.
July
Green light for MPLA and Unita
The Constitutional Court approves 5 parties and 4 partial alliances of 27 political groups who applied to stand in the parliamentary elections in August of the same year. MPLA and Unita are among those approved.
May
Manager post is withdrawn after accusations
The Supreme Court rejects the appointment of a new head of the National Electoral Commission after the opposition complained that the nominee was not politically neutral.
