Angola’s business climate: confidence returns, constraints remain

Angola’s latest economic figures offer some of the strongest evidence in years that growth is broadening beyond oil. GDP expanded 8.74% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, while the non-oil economy grew even faster, at 9.24%. Diamond extraction, information and communications, hospitality, manufacturing and financial services all recorded double-digit growth. Inflation also fell to 9.33% in July, returning to single digits after years of much higher price increases. Those numbers suggest an economy moving in the right direction.

However, the question remains of how much of that improvement is reaching companies, workers and households. Unemployment was stuck at 21.5% in the second quarter, and much of Angola’s employment remains informal.

Economist Francisco Paulo told the Angola Briefing this week that the composition of growth, concentrated in the oil and diamond sectors, helps explain the disconnect. Oil and diamonds can generate large increases in output without creating employment on a similar scale because both industries are highly capital-intensive.

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