A multi-sectoral team from the World Bank on tracks of the Benguela railway during a visit to the Lobito Corridor.
Development does not happen in silos. Creating synergies, coordinating efforts, and integrating ideas and sectors is key for us at the World Bank to achieve development impact at scale. This goes double when you want to help leverage the untapped potential for the social and economic development of local communities along Angola’s Lobito Corridor.
The regions adjacent to the Lobito Corridor are currently reaping the benefits of various projects supported by the World Bank in Angola. We are embarking on a crucial phase of reorganization and revitalization for the Lobito corridor, and it is essential to improve and strengthen the mechanisms that facilitate the integration of the diverse projects being executed in this area. This coordinated approach will help ensure that the initiatives complement each other and contribute to the overall development and prosperity of the region.
Our recent effort along these lines was to bring together 20 task team leaders and project members from the World Bank, join them with government counterparts, and build interlinkages and shared goals, to help unlock the potential of communities in the region. Spillovers of a coordinated approach among World Bank projects in multiple sectors can benefit communities along the Lobito Corridor and our trip was to help identify such synergies. One such community is Cassuculo, which we visited during our time together. The village is on the outskirts of Huambo, a central region of Angola, and has about 1,400 residents. They live just inside the perimeter of the Institute for Agricultural Research. Most of the villagers, now retired, were former employees of the academic research institution. Many currently dedicate their days to growing more than 48 different species of avocado seedlings in their backyards, using improvised but effective greenhouse nurseries. These avocado seedlings are one of the village's main sources of income, and the village ambition is to be able to produce enough to meet national demand and also to export to other markets.
Huambo has advantages in the development of this avocado value chain due to its soil, climatic, and geographical conditions, but technical and production capacity is still in its infancy - the seedlings do not yet meet phytosanitary quality certifications for export or even the local industrial requirements. This community, like many others in the country, despite being five kilometers from the city center, struggles with limited access to key basic services, including electricity, potable water, roads, health, and education. And this is where development corridors like Lobito can play a key role in the economic development of communities.
Development corridors serve a crucial function in enhancing growth opportunities for communities by establishing well-connected routes and infrastructure that facilitate access to markets, allowing local producers to engage in broader economic activities, provided that there is an integrated approach. One example of this integrated approach was evidenced during our visit to see work of our Economic Diversification and Job Creation Project (Diversifica Mais). This project is supporting the establishment of logistic platforms across the Lobito Corridor. Another project, the Commercial Agriculture Development Project (PDAC), currently in 5 provinces, including Huambo, is supporting development of business plans with the intent to improve the business environment and institutional capacity to support private sector competitiveness in selected value chains. Another project, the Family Farming Transformation project (MOSAP) is supporting small producers to increase the productivity of their agricultural activity, through access to rural extension in the Family Farming Field Schools. A collaboration between these three projects can provide financial and technical support for a study of the avocado value chain in Angola, with a special focus on the Lobito Corridor. This analysis could support the development of the avocado value chain for export, opening Angola to a whole new market.
The development of the Lobito Corridor holds the potential to significantly enhance the economic landscape of communities similar to Cassuculo by fostering investments and creating job opportunities. To ensure this benefits all citizens, it is essential to prioritize social welfare programs that support social development, ensuring that educational, health, and social protection initiatives are strategically aligned to address the most pressing needs of these communities.
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