Business success, Angola-style
Postcolonial politics and the rise and rise of Sonangol
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4253099 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ricardo Soares De Oliveira (0000-0002-4660-6038, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 595-619 |
| Publication date | 2007-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Modern African Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-278X • E-ISSN: 1469-7777 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0022278x07002893 |
| OpenAlex | W2051675861 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 58 |
| References cited | 12 |
This paper investigates a paradoxical case of business success in one of the world's worst-governed states, Angola. Founded in 1976 as the essential tool of the Angolan end of the oil business, Sonangol, the national oil company, was from the very start protected from the dominant (both predatory and centrally planned) logic of Angola's political economy. Throughout its first years, the pragmatic senior management of Sonangol accumulated technical and managerial experience, often in partnership with Western oil and consulting firms. By the time the ruling party dropped Marxism in the early 1990s, Sonangol was the key domestic actor in the economy, an island of competence thriving in tandem with the implosion of most other Angolan state institutions. However, the growing sophistication of Sonangol (now employing thousands of people, active in four continents, and controlling a vast parallel budget of offshore accounts and myriad assets) has not led to the benign developmental outcomes one would expect from the successful 'capacity building' of the last thirty years. Instead, Sonangol has primarily been at the service of the presidency and its rentier ambitions. Amongst other themes, the paper seeks to highlight the extent to which a nominal 'failed state' can be successful amidst widespread human destitution, provided that basic tools for elite empowerment (in this case, Sonangol and the means of coercion) exist to ensure the viability of incumbents
Competence (human resources) · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Elite · General partnership · Management · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sophistication · Law · Natural Resources and Economic Development
Pursuing post-neoliberal alternatives during the global governance interregnum
Angola's quadruple bonanza
Governing African oil and gas
Neocolonialismo na África
Luanda Onde Está? Contemporary African Art and the Rentier State
The Chinese just come and do it’
A trajetória hegemônica do petróleo angolano
O MPLA e a governação
The Institutions Curse
New Directions in Africa–China Studies
Local content policies and petro-development in Sub-Saharan Africa
African Development and the Marginalisation of Domestic Capitalists
Lifting the Resource Curse in Africa’s Energy Sector
Proto-Bureaucracies
The South–South investment that never happened
The politics of governing oil after ‘best-practice’ reforms
From moderate to radical resource nationalism in the boom era
The non-oil tax reform in Angola
Transnational spaces, hybrid governance and civil society contestation in Mozambique’s gas boom
Delegation without borders
Chinese Economic Statecraft
Predatory Peace
The impact of NOCs in Chinese foreign policy
The Legacies of Defeat
Pentecostalism in the ‘New Luanda’
The other resource curse
Presidential extraversion
Fatal architectures and death by design
Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World
Researching Africa and the offshore world
Resources-for-infrastructure (R4I) swaps
Tangled up in Blue
Intimate Encounters with the State in Post-War Luanda, Angola
Disrupting self-censorship, inventing public space through interactive performances in Luanda, Angola
The Resource Curse and Oil Revenues in Angola and Venezuela
The potential of corporate environmental responsibility of Chinese state-owned enterprises in Africa
L’entrée de nouveaux acteurs sur la scène des projets de développement sanitaires
Technocratic manager, imperial agent, or diplomatic champion? The IMF in the anarchical society
The dual nature of local content in Angola's oil and gas industry
Angola 2025
(Re)Conceptualizing the Political Economy of the African State Form
Foreign Aid, Resource Rents, and State Fragility in Mozambique and Angola
Blocos Urbanism
Hóspede é uma nuvem, passa, mas eu não sou uma nuvem, fico
Illiberal peacebuilding in Angola
The new wave of international authoritarian populism of the 2010s has also arrived in Africa? The Mozambique and Angolan cases
The Paradox of Isabel dos Santos
És feiticeiro, então já estudas
Austerity en route, from Lisbon to Luanda
Service Provision and Authoritarian Resilience During the Angolan Civil War 1992-2002
A Marriage of Convenience on the Rocks? Revisiting the Sino-Angolan Relationship
Perspectives on African Studies and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
What happened to the theory of African capitalism
A Culture of Immediatism
Local histories, national ambitions, and the shadow of the Cold War
The Dream and the Ordinary
African Studies Keyword
Oil, Power, and Poverty in Angola
The Origins of the Angolan Civil War
Poisoned Wells
L’etat en Afrique
Angola
African Islands and Enclaves
Multinationals, the State and Control of the Nigerian Economy
The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825-1975
Angola's political economy of war
The Third Portuguese Empire 1825-1975
La reconversion économique de la nomenklatura pétrolière
La Fondation Eduardo dos Santos (Fesa)
Angola
| Unique citing works | 58 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,63 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2026 (17) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 50 |