President Joao tasked with fixing Angola's economy

As he enters his second term with depleted support, President Joao Lourenco confronts the Herculean task of reviving Angola's economy and winning back its disillusioned youth.

In the National Assembly elections held on August 24, Lourenco's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has been in power for nearly 50 years, received 51.17 percent of the vote.

Lourenco has gained a second term as president because the winning party's leader automatically takes the position.

But it was also the MPLA's worst performance since the country's first democratic election in 1992, when it was a former Portuguese colony. It received 61 percent of the vote in 2017.

According to Augusto Santana of the nonprofit Democracy Works Foundation, the decline will increase pressure on Lourenco to carry out the much-promised economic reforms and reenergize the opposition.

Santana, speaking to AFP over the phone from the capital Luanda, warned that he would face street protests and opposition from inside the MPLA.

“He faces quite a lot of challenges,” he said.

In 2017, Lourenco, 68, succeeded Jose Eduardo dos Santos, a longtime leader who left behind a nation plagued by corruption and nepotism and a terrible recession.

The former commander started an extensive reform program to fight corruption, draw in foreign capital, and diversify the economy's reliance on oil.

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