The 1965 Angola undertakings airmail stamp series

Abstract

This article focuses on a group of engineering undertakings in Angola, which are dealt with in an inverted order, as the iconographic sources the article looks at established the case-studies, and not the other way around. An airmail stamp set issued in 1965, and in use in the Portuguese Province of Angola, was the basis for the research, and also validated the territorial, technological and economic strategic worth of the objects included in it. One of the major difficulties with infrastructure in Angola has to do with the distance between its larger cities. Apart from Huambo, which is strategically close to the country’s territorial centre, all its main towns are located along the coast, at distances that were travelled by boat. This explains why the major railroads that penetrated the Angolan inland, from Luanda, Lobito and Moçâmedes (plus the shorter, narrow-gauged, Amboim railway), do not meet at any point. This urban settlement dispersion is a drawback also in terms of the electricity supply, an issue the hydroelectric plants included in the group of engineering feats were meant to solve.

Almost all the facilities featured on the ten stamps were built during the third quarter of the 20th century, which was a period of technological development and the exploration of Angolan natural resources and transportation networks. All have survived, even if some have undergone considerable change and reconstruction.

Paradoxically, the Colonial War years were also times of economic growth in the Portuguese-speaking territories in Africa, and particularly so in Angola, through investment by the Portuguese State in infrastructure, the immigration of Portuguese colonisers seeking out this land of opportunity, and the so-called ‘war effort’. This was the case of the oil and natural gas sectors, which grew in importance in the Angolan economy, so that by 2005 and 2008 they accounted for 56% and 58% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (Esperança, 2011: 184). This has certainly not changed much over the last decade.

The facilities in the article are in part dealt with in accordance with the schedule for the 1963 presidential visit to Angola by Américo Tomás, during which this President of the Portuguese Republic visited — and in some cases inaugurated — said infrastructures. The visit was accompanied by the issue of new banknotes from the Bank of Angola, which had some reissues during the following years, and were also dealt with in the research, as they also showcased infrastructural endeavours in Angola, and twice repeated the same subjects as in the postage stamps.