Welcome to the page of the State Visit to Angola

I would like to start by expressing my deepest gratitude to Your Excellency, Mister Governor, for the warm and friendly welcome you saw fit to show me, my Wife and our retinue on this Visit to the Province of Huila. A Visit that allowed me to relive the extraordinary beauty of this region’s landscape, which I retain from a brief – too brief – journey through these lands, a few decades ago, when I was a lot younger than I am today.

I thank you also for the opportunity provided me to meet representative figures of the various sectors of this Province’s society and to commune with many of my countrymen who live and work here.

Your Excellency will allow me to address them, very particularly.

From here, from the top of the Huila plateau, from one of the highest points in this country, we can view Angola from a different, wider perspective, guessing the enormous potentialities that stretch before our eyes.

The perspective and the vision of the Portuguese who settled here in search of prosperity, in a climate of peace and harmony are, in effect, different. The enterprising and innovatory spirit of those that knew how to create community bonds must be saluted and, as such, recall their roots in the interior of this immense territory.

The first European contacts with these lands started in the beginning of the XVII century, in 1623, at a time when Portugal, let us remember, was not an independent country. Nowadays, Angola and Portugal are independent and sovereign countries that work together within a framework of fruitful cooperation, which takes advantage of the bonds of fraternal friendship which are characteristic of our relations.

But cooperation is carried out on the ground, with the people, with their skill and will to conquer.

Huíla, as everyone knows, is one of the regions in Angola’s interior where the presence of the Portuguese makes itself felt more intensely. Your presence in this land is not a mere occasional accident. The Portuguese Huila community is not here in passing, in the rapid search for ephemeral opportunities. On the contrary: it grew roots and launched durable seeds in this fertile and promissory land.

Angola and the Government of the Province of Huíla, in particular, know well that, before many others, including in the more difficult times, they could always count on Portugal and on the Portuguese.

This conclusive evidence is relevant when Angola is betting upon the diversification of its economy and on fighting the desertification of its interior.

The Portuguese understand and accompany this vision of Angola for its future, as I had the opportunity to refer to His Excellency the Governor, during the meeting I held with him, and as was made obvious in the entrepreneurial Seminar that is taking place here.

The Portuguese are mindful of opportunities in fields with large potentials, but are also well aware of the support required by the success of Angola’s bet in this, specifically in areas such as staff qualification, education, or health. The agreements signed between the Lubango Hospital and the Coimbra University Hospitals are a fair interpretation of what I have just stated.

I want to leave to the authorities and to the people of Huila a word of admiration for what they have been able to build in only eight years of peace, a word of confidence in the future and in the potentialities of this beautiful region, and the certainty that Portugal will always side with Angola, with the Angolans of Huila, such as we do with friends who are nearest to us..

To the Portuguese in Huila I want to say, in my name and on behalf of our country, the pride that Portugal has in your work, in the image you portray of your Fatherland, through your effort, your work, your daring, and your enterprising spirit. And to thank you deeply for it.

Thank you very much.