We are proud to have been directly involved in a number of developmental projects, and are pleased to showcase the following projects, that have been both personal and company milestones.
We had been invited by the National Police Cooperation of Angola, based in the capital of Luanda, to restructure their microcredit-denominated
Necycredito-Sociedade de Microcredito SA scheme, primarily because it was not fully operational and carried an unpaid debt volume of
approximately €600,000.00. The system was also plagued by difficult access to other police units in the country’s 18 provinces.
After carrying out a business diagnosis and a plan of action, we were able to resolve the problems within a six month time frame. The solution
resolved to align their corporate governance, compliance and operations
in alignment with the rules of the Nacional Reserve Bank of Angola (BNA), as well as include the European Code of Conduct for credit concession
version 2.5 (enacted from November 2017) on the daily practice of credit and debt management. We further created and added a new range of products incorporating the credit concession. These included support for women in agriculture co-operatives and promotion of entrepreneurship
in rural areas, which were further supported by value-added insurance services underwritten by local insurance company Ensa.
We are happy to report that our nine months of consulting services and project management allowed the microcredit debt facility to reduce unpaid credit by 40%. We successfully trained 12 employees at head office in customer services and financial literacy, and based on this success, we were asked to expanded our services into seven provinces, assisting local salespeople. This effectively increased the number of credit concessions by over 60%, satisfying the great demand for quick credit access for individuals comprising the lower market segment.
The province of Cuanza-sul in the Ebo municipality are home to primarily the widows and orphans of war, who live off subsistence farming. The squalid living conditions, and relatively ineffective farming and agricultural activities were a considerable challenge.
We were mandated by the Association of War Veterans (ASCOFA) to conceptualise a plan to assign these women to several cooperative groups,
creating a product and production differentiation that was supported by different local government economic funding initiatives. These initiatives include PRODESI (Program to Support Product Production Diversification), Replacement of Import to Export Products, and, PAC (Project to Support National Credit Concession).
To date, the product and production differentiation initiatives have yielded more than 40 new agricultural products into the consumer market, including the harvesting of the local porcelain rose varietal, which, up until the appearance of COVID-19, was sold to upmarket hotels in Luanda.
The district of Petrangol is marked by extreme poverty and high unemployment rates. Children are often sent to sell their wares on the streets of Luanda, because their parents do not have the finances to pay for their children’s primary school fees. A private initiative was undertaken by the city’s senior citizens to open a zero-fee school. With the proceeds from these private funds, it was possible to build a two-storey building that housed 12 classrooms. Children aged between 5 and 17 years could now get off the streets and back into the classrooms, where they belonged.
Provision for children under the minimum school-going age to receive pre-school education through a creche facility at the school, and made it possible for children attending the creche to progress through the grades and attend this school up until the seventh grade. Our company provided training to a select group of teachers, with the Ministry of Education of Angola donating school books for both student and teacher use. Extra funding was secured by creating the Godparent Programme that saw support being sent from Germany to Angola.
The province of Malange is home to Kalandula Falls, one of the most beautiful locales in Angola, and a vibrant tourist spot. Our company, in collaboration with Germany, Holland and South Africa, provided an advisory service to the local government for the repurposing of ageing and defunct infrastructure to better enhance and improve the local tourism economy.
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