Months after receiving 250 Cuban doctors in Angola to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, the Angolan government decided in mid-December to terminate its contract with Imbondex.
According to the Africa Intelligence website, the Cuban public company should build a series of roads with a total of 283.19 km and 375 meters of bridges in the province of Bengo.
The termination of this contract, announced on December 10 by a presidential decree signed by João Lourenço, was justified by Imbondex’s “non-compliance” with its contractual obligations, with the works never having started. In the same decree, a tender was also announced for the search for a new construction company.
Budgeted at around the US $ 77 million, the contracts in question were entrusted to the Cuban company in April 2017, in the last months of José Eduardo dos Santos’ rule.
The former president made cooperation between Luanda and Havana one of his priorities, hence the presence of hundreds of Cuban doctors in Angola, despite the potentially high weight they represent for Angolan taxpayers. Although Lourenço has, to a certain extent, followed the same policy, he seems less passionate about a close relationship between the two countries than his predecessor.
