{{Angola’s veteran leader has promised to create more jobs as he looks to quell growing discontent among youth in the southern African country.}}
“The future is in your hands,” President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, 71, told a national youth meeting in Luanda Friday, adding that he would also create more training centres to impart skills.
“Two thirds of the country’s population is below 25 years and we are aware this is our main wealth,” President Dos Santos said at the closing of the first national youth forum attended by 3,000 delegates.
According to analysts in the capital, the gathering was called to quell growing discontent and prevent disgruntled youth in Africa’s second largest oil producer from demonstrating.
The Angolan youth revolutionary group has called up a demonstration on September 19, a day before the country holds the rink hockey World Cup.
“The demonstration is aimed at pressing the country’s government for social injustices,” Mr Adão Ramos, a youth member, told Voice of America Radio.
Youth groups in the post-conflict country have been holding anti government demonstrations since 2011 but these are frequently broken up by security authorities.
Veteran
The authoritarian Dos Santos, who will mark 34 years in power on September 21, is the second longest serving leader in Africa after Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema.
He was re-elected in August 2012 and heads the the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, which holds a commanding majority in parliament.
“It is not fair that national or international companies operating here prefer employing foreign people than local when Angolan youth are also able,” he said.
On Tuesday, Angolan youths working in Luanda for the Chinese multinational CITIC accused the Asian company of ill-treatment and delaying pay.
CITIC has denied the allegations.
NMG
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