KILAMBA, Angola- Eighteen miles outside of Angola’s capital, Luanda, sits a residential development with 750 eight–story apartment buildings, schools, and storefronts. The city is Kilamba, built by the state–owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation to house over half a million Angolans.
Kilamba took less than three years and $3.5 billion to construct and is perhaps the biggest African building project in recent years.
However, in 2012 international news outlets reported that the city remained a 12,255 acre ghost town, largely uninhabited and eerily devoid of signs of life, commerce, or community. The attractive and bright buildings suggested a vibrancy not supported by the reality of the city.
Louise Redvers reported for the BBC from Kilamba in 2012, stating that she did not see many people aside from Chinese workers. She eventually came across what she described as a “tiny pocket of life” — a school.
Students were being bused to the school since no children actually lived in Kilamba. She interviewed one student who said, “I really like this place…It’s very quiet, much calmer than the other city, there’s no criminality.”
He laughed, however, when Redvers asked him if he and his family would live there.
“No way, we can’t afford this. It’s impossible. And there is no work for my parents here.”
Jack Francisco, a Kilamba street sweeper, agreed. “Yes, it’s a nice place for sure…[but]people like us don’t have money like that to be able to live here.”
66% of Angolans live on less than $2 a day. The units in Kilamba cost between $70,000 and $190,000.
The country won independence from Portugal in 1975 and then suffered through a bloody, 27–year civil war that ended in 2002, leaving no middle class, only the very rich and very poor.
President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, in power since 1979, made a campaign pledge in 2008 to develop a million homes in four years. Kilamba had been billed as a delivery on this promise, but after visiting the site in November 2012 and seeing so few inhabitants, Dos Santos called for a reduction in prices.
As of November 2012 only 4,000 of the 20,000 units had been sold and of those only about 600 had been paid for, as demonstrated by the figures Redvers cites. In June 2013 she reported allegations of corruption and faulty apartment facilities, and in October she reiterated, “People in Angola are still talking about Kilamba and lamenting its failures and they are likely to do so for years to come.”
On the other hand, not everyone agrees with Redvers’ assessment of Kilamba.
Jose Ribeiro, the editor of the state-owned Jornal de Angola, called the BBC’s original 2012 report of a ghost town “shameful” and joked that Redvers must have just mistaken all the people living in Kilamba for ghosts.
Also, in an unverified CNN iReport from April 2013, a purported citizen of Kilamba states, “Kilamba is expected to become a model for economies both emerging and established due to the great success that it is encountering…The previously non-existent middle class is finally beginning to emerge again, and looks to drive the new city towards economic prosperity.”
ANGOP, Angola’s official news agency, reported in September 2013 — less than a year after the BBC’s report — that all of Kilamba’s units have sold, “with celebration of contracts and handover of keys to buyers currently in progress.”
Nevertheless, it is difficult to know what the realities in Kilamba actually are.
Missing from much of this dialogue is the role that China plays in the project.
In fact, reports of Chinese “ghost towns” within its own borders have caused international scrutiny. Tom Miller, author of “China’s Urban Billion” describes the Chinese real estate phenomenon this way: “Power rests in the hands of very few people…[they]can make big decisions looking ahead 10, 15 years…and create something for a society that hasn’t really arrived yet.”
He goes on, “It’s build them and they will come…But of course there will be some big wasteful developments.”
China has committed $75billion to aid Africa in the last ten years. Some argue that China is hungry for natural resources, and if this is true Angola, rich with oil, would be a prime location for “soft power” projects.
BBC’s Redvers, however, says she does not blame the Chinese for Kilamba’s challenges.
She states, “I think the responsibility lies with the Angolan government, not just to ensure value for money, but also to challenge the practice of importing labor that does nothing for Angola’s economy or its people.”
– Kaylie Cordingley
Sources: BBC: Chinese built Ghost-town, Reuters, AllAfrica: Haunting Ghost Town, CNN, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, New Statesman, AllAfrica: Denial, ANGOP, BBC: Angola Profile
Photo: Google Maps