The president’s pledge to wash away corruption in the oil-rich state is facing scrutiny

Not far from the flashy skyscrapers of downtown Luanda, the capital of one of Africa’s supposedly richest countries, is a public morgue. Celestino Chivava, who worked in the Angolan oil industry until he lost his job after the price collapse of 2014, describes how families wash the bodies of their loved ones on a slab outside.

“They put perfume in the mouth to stop the corpse smelling,” he says of the capital’s do-it-yourself funeral services. “Sometimes, when the electricity goes off, the bodies get stuck together and the families have to pull them apart.”
Continue reading ““Africa: can João Lourenço cure Angola of its crony capitalism?” by David Pilling in Financial Times” →