It is really hard to explain how it could have happened that in this potentially richest African territory provided with petroleum, diamonds, minerals of strategic importance, precious types of wood, fish, fruitful lands with tropical and moderate climate, water resources and much more, almost 70% of the population still live below the poverty line, while earning such incomes that cannot even ensure their physical survival.
At present Angola has managed to achieve what can be called its most important accomplishment – the country has been able to uphold its independence and territorial integrity, to lay down the foundations of a democratic state, and to ensure the unity of Angolan people in solving the problem of creating a united national state, despite all acts of aggression and all actions aimed at destabilizing the country's internal situation for the last 25 years.
The simultaneous and joint invasion of two foreign armies - from Zaire in the north, and from South Africa in the south in 1975, then the occupation of a part of Angola by troops sent by Pretoria in the 1980s, and the latest destabilizing activities of armed detachments of the UNITA party led by Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, supported by the South African racist regime and the US administration – all these attempts have failed to overcome the Angolan people’s resistance.
At the same time, the Angolan leadership has rendered continuous assistance to Zimbabwean patriots who achieved their goal of national independence in 1980, to Namibian fighters for national independence gained by them only in 1990, and to the South-African resistance movement that struggled against the apartheid policy for racial integration and for making the South-African regime really democratic.
The so-called “Great Lakes Conflict” has also proved that Angola's policy can become a decisive stabilizing factor for the whole Central Africa and South Africa.
Today, after Jonas Savimbi's death (February 22, 2002) and subsequent signing of the Memorandum of Mutual Understanding between Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) and UNITA's armed units (as a supplement to the Peace Protocol of Lusaka), in connection with the initiation of a new governmental economic policy that has been supported by powerful international finance organizations, after the Angolan parliament’s approval of the fundamental principles of revision of the Constitutional Law (legislative formulation of a semi-presidential democratic regime and of a transition to an open market economy), as well as in connection with the declaration about the possibility of new elections already in 2004-2005, Angola has managed to go over to a new phase of development, that the country’s President has characterized as “a phase of achievement of peace, consolidation of democracy, stabilization of national economy and return of national dignity and hope to all Angolans”.