Angolan society has been almost destroyed due to long years of war and needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Various areas of its society, economy, services and culture have been neglected. The efficiency of the society is, at the moment, greatly reduced.

For all practical purposes, Angola doesn't produce any goods and almost everything must be imported from abroad. Costs of goods and services are therefore extremely high, among the highest in the world and their availability is also very scarce.

Severe shortages of housing, transportation, food, water, medicine and utilities plague Luanda and other cities. Shortages result in a lack of sanitary conditions in many areas, including Luanda.

The overall situation in the capital city Luanda reflects these circumstances which are worsened by overpopulation. The water system, the electric and phone networks are inefficient and are frequently interrupted. As a consequence of these facts, violent crime is rife throughout Angola. Street crime is common in all areas of Luanda, at all hours of the day.

One of the worse problems that Angolan society faces, from a cultural viewpoint, is a lack of "information" availability. There are few libraries and where they exist they are in bad condition. There is lack of recent publications (books, technical magazines, etc.) and, due to the inefficiency of the mail system, it is difficult to receive any kind of documentation from abroad, both in paper and multimedia format.

This problem is more evident in the high technology sectors, particularly in computer science, where it is crucial to have the possibility to access information and data that are reasonably up to date. This kind of information, due to technological progress, tends to become obsolete in a very short time.

Access to the Internet and to the enormous amount of resources currently available inside the World Wide Web may solve, although only partially, this kind of problem. Internet is at the moment a huge database, which contains information of every kind, not only computer science related, but also, for instance, news, scientific and cultural information. More importantly, information is quite up to date and access to a great part of this database is free of charge.

In Angola there is still a lack of legislation in matters of telecommunications, especially regarding wireless and satellite connections. This means that it is not often obvious what is possible (and what isn't). Procedures to follow in order to achieve things are badly defined. Usually, in order to apply for something in this field, it is necessary to deal with the local national telephone company (Angola Telecom), which clearly suffers from an excess of bureaucracy and procedural slowness. Moreover, its equipment is outdated and/or inefficient.

Both local and long-distance phone lines are in bad condition. From a technical point of view this means that it is very difficult to start any kind of data/voice communication. The lines are very noisy - this lowers the communication speed - and there are a lot of line interruptions. Calling abroad is always very laborious, at any hour of the day. AT&T recently started to offer a local number in Luanda, and other international telecommunication companies may follow soon. The quality of the service is fairly good, the problem is again how to reach the AT&T network via the Angola Telecom lines.

With respect to the Internet, the only available and reliable way to send and receive data is using batch methods like those of E-mail systems, for example via CompuServe, which offers local connection in Luanda, or FidoNet. CompuServe offers interactive download from its proprietary access to the web, charging however – via its network provider SCITOR – almost one dollar per minute, making it a prohibitive cost. Any other kind of interactive and/or multimedia communication is virtually impossible to achieve.

In order to solve this problem, we analyzed the possibility of setting up a dedicated communication line from one site in Angola (specifically, at the Catholic University of Luanda) to another site located inside the US or Europe. Using this dedicated line it would be possible to connect to the Internet. The only way to achieve this would be to set up a permanent satellite link. However, this solution seems to be premature for the following reasons:

1. It is not clear how to activate it formally. The Angolan Government seems to dislike the existence of satellite systems that are not under his own control and the granting process is complex and the governing law is unclear.
2. Costs are still very high. A simple 64Kb link (which is the minimum sufficient for this kind of communication) is expensive, requiring a necessary up-front investment for the required equipment (such as the antenna), plus the renting of a satellite channel. This kind of cost may be affordable at this point in time only by a consortium of interested organizations.

In Luanda there is a growing number of people/companies interested, almost exclusively for business reasons. They are all trying to set up reliable communication systems in order to offer Internet services. Like in other rapidly developing countries,  one could assume that some of the entities involved are not completely reliable and that there are probably a lot of profiteers around.  We therefore strongly recommend that special precautions be taken in the choice of partners and in the drawing up of contracts.

During our survey, we held meetings with  the following commercial organizations, which basically represent the private initiative in the Telecommunication and Internet field:

At the moment, for the reasons mentioned above, we would advise against having a permanent Internet connection. Its costs may be justified only for established and moneyed commercial organizations. However, the situation is evolving rapidly and it is likely that, in a relatively short time, one or more of the companies that are locally involved in network technologies, may be able to reach a reasonable standard of quality for reasonable charges. It is advisable to  contact these companies often to be informed on how they develop their business.  Angola Telecom will also play an important role, and it will be interesting to see how they will react to the fast changing Internet and computer technology.

Angola is in need of many things.  One of the most important actions that need to be taken in order to truly help the country to develop is the promotion of its education system.  This is really important in every field: law, economics, liberal arts, engineering, geology, medicine, agriculture, et cetera.  A large number of skilled managers, economists, technicians, are needed.  Knowledge of basic computer science is, in this context, a fundamental background needed in the modern working place.

The most common way of teaching computer science is to set up a computing classroom. This is a structure where teaching and learning computer science may be done with good results. It consists several personal computers (Intel based) of medium to low quality which are available to students, some shared devices (like printers, scanners, a video camera, etc.) and a high-end quality computer (a server) which would be used by the teacher to manage all the classroom's computing resources. All the components are connected together to form a small local network. A small but well organized library should be available within the structure.

This kind of structure is relatively easy to set up, even if the budget is limited. With regards to the Angolan situation it is, however, necessary to deal with some special problems:

1. It is not easy and it is usually quite expensive to find a place (an office or something similar) in Luanda which would be suitable for this purpose. It would be necessary for the rooms to be equipped with an independent electricity generator, a non-interruptible power supply and air conditioning. The rooms would also need to be protected by active and passive security.
2. The availability of hardware and software on the Angolan market is generally low. Everything has to be imported and involves complicated customs procedures. It is important to identify a company that can help with the purchase of computer technology and with the access to the Internet.
3. As a consequence of point b) accessories and spare parts are not easily found in Angola. It would be advisable to have an adequate spare parts inventory available. We strongly recommend that everything be very carefully thought about, in order to avoid a situation where things come to a halt just because the right sized screwdriver is unavailable.
4. In case of computer and Internet education, some of the classes may be taught in English, working together with parallel courses in technical English. But most of the lessons within a course should be taught in Portuguese. It is important to find good teachers locally and to involve them in the organization of the classroom.
5. It is important that computer and Internet education courses be strongly oriented towards specific local needs.  Really basic courses and primers (word-processing, use of Windows/95, etc.) will the necessary first step in many cases.
6. In Angola, time and patience are a necessity, and that can be difficult to accept, especially when dealing with fast changing computer technology!   It's important to start every endeavor as soon as possible, even with limited resources and/or using temporary solutions.  Obviously, it is necessary to program things carefully, in order to let the "thing" grow in time.  Also, it is necessary, in my opinion, to involve from the start Internet related technologies in any attempt to build computer knowledge.  Even if not connected to the outside world in the beginning, this kind of technology may successfully be taught simulating the Internet world inside the classroom (for instance accessing data stored on a CD-ROM Juke Box).

Note: this report is intended for a non-technical audience, therefore some technical (computer science related) details were been intentionally omitted and/or simplified.