Angola

Angola experienced more than four decades of constant war beginning in 1961 with its struggle for independence from Portugal and a civil war beginning in 1975 once it had been decolonized. Landmines were used throughout the struggle. When the 2003 Peace Agreement was signed there were an estimated 4,200 mine fields.

• Angola has an estimated 6 million landmines—more than one for every two people.
• There are over 70,000 landmine survivors living in Angola today out of a total population of only 10 million.
• Between 1999 and 2004 there were over 700 killed by landmines and 2,300 injured.

The coffee industry was among the civil war’s casualties with Angola’s coffee production, after several years of recovery, barely passing 1% (3,000 metric tons) of levels set in 1974 (228,000 metric tons) when it was the world’s fourth largest producer. Through an innovative program between the Angolan National Institute of Coffee and the UN World Food Program, international donors are providing assistance to demobilized soldiers from both sides of the conflict to begin small coffee farms as a way of building peace and providing enough income to cover their families’ basic needs. Landmines, however, remain a major barrier to expanding this program. Two-thirds of the coffee presently produced never reaches market because of mined or damaged roads that make transportation cost from some regions more expensive than the coffee itself and thousands of acres of potential land remains untouched because of mines.

• Because of the legacy of war and landmines, Angola coffee exports are 1.5% of their levels in 1974.
• 2/3rds of Angolan coffee grown today never reaches the market because of mined roads.

The international community has responded to the landmine crisis in Angola but huge needs remain: demining activities have begun in only 8 of its 18 provinces with only a fifth of mined areas cleared for public use, thousands of refugees displaced by the war are returning and desperate for land and moving into mined areas faster than they can be informed of the dangers, and, worst of all, only a fraction of the 70,000 mine survivors receive any attention at all.

In a survey of 275 recent landmine survivors, only 4 reported having received any sort of rehabilitation and it is estimated that 30 to 50 percent of landmine survivors die simply because of the distances to or lack of resources in medical facilities. Agriculture, including coffee picking, is one of the top three activities (including transportation and collecting firewood and water) leading to landmine accidents in Angola.