The province of Lunda-Norte is hosting on Tuesday the central act of the 102nd birthday of the Founder of the Nation, António Agostinho Neto, which, among several actions taken to improve the lives of Angolans, includes the division of the old Lunda, culminating in the current Lunda-Norte and Lunda-Sul.

Dundo, the capital, is located in the municipality of Chitato, and the province is located in the northeast of the country, with a population of 972,183 inhabitants, distributed by the municipalities of Chitato, Cambulo, Caungula, Cuilo, Cuango, Capenda Camulemba, Lucapa, Lubalo, Lóvua and Xá-muteba.

Already within the perspective of reducing asymmetries, the two provinces were created on July 4, 1978, through Presidential Decree No. 86/78, of July 4.

As the province of Lunda, the population living in the northern part was forced to travel to the city of Saurimo, then capital, where the services of the Local Administration of the State were installed, to obtain official documents and academic training.

At
that time, the northern part of Lunda was considered an economic capital, due to its mining and agricultural potential, a scenario changed with the division of Lunda, by the government of Angola, three years after National Independence, provisionally establishing the capital of the newly formed province of Lunda-Norte, in Lucapa, while a new one would be built in the Mulepi region.

The early days were marked by limitations on the movement of people within the province, especially in diamond exploration areas, and from there to the country’s capital and other regions.

The project to establish the capital of Lunda-Norte in Lucapa was not materialized, due to the political instability that the country was going through.

Meanwhile, in 2000, the capital of Lunda-Norte was transferred to Chitato, urban district of Dundo due to the fact that it has better administrative structures and from this year on, the province began to expand and open up to new growth prospects in all sectors.

To lead the new province and
change the scenario, the former guerrilla João Ernesto dos Santos ‘Liberdade’ was appointed as commissioner, who worked on creating conditions for the functioning of the administrative services.

Faced with the new challenges, the government started, at the end of the 2000s, the Mussungue Centrality project, in Chitato, to improve infrastructure and promote access to decent housing.

The Mussungue Centrality, currently with 5,004 apartments, has one million and five hundred thousand square meters, with a residential area of one million and 150 thousand square meters.

It has 419 buildings, five thousand and four apartments, 153 commercial spaces and consists of T4 and T5 apartments.

Designed to house about 30 thousand people, the project, whose first phase is subdivided into seven zones, six of which are residential and one of which is residential.

The apartments already completed, housing more than 20 thousand people, represent the first phase of the project that foresees 20 thousand dwellings, to be built
in a phased manner.

In 2009, a historic moment marks the province, for the first time, and in the eastern region, a university, Lueji A’nkonde, was created, comprising the faculties of Economics, Law and Pedagogy.

The same is true of the other education subsystems, where 208 schools have been built since 2000, in a universe of 1,873 classrooms, which today house 323,000 students, provided by 5,974 teachers.

The health sector was one of those that recorded the most gains, currently having 13 hospitals, 18 health centers and 67 posts, provided by more than 800 nurses and more than 100 doctors.

The division also allowed the construction of Camaquenzo Airport, with a runway two thousand and 500 meters long, 45 wide and 15 berms, a two-storey building, with capacity to receive 300 passengers.

To ensure comfort in road, urban, inter-municipal and inter-provincial traffic, 1,161 kilometres of roads and 34 reinforced concrete bridges were built and rehabilitated.

The Luachimo dam, with a production capacity of
34 megawatts of electricity, the rehabilitation of the Dundo Museum, which stands out in the conservation of various cultural collections, documentation, historical and specific research on the Lunda Tchokwe people, are, among others, the fruits of the strategic vision of the National Hero, Agostinho Neto, to divide Lunda into two provinces.

The province of Lunda Norte, which hosts the central act of the 102nd birthday of the Founder of the Nation, is located in the northeast of the country with a population of 972,183 inhabitants, distributed in the municipalities of Chitato (political and economic capital), Cambulo, Caungula, Cuilo, Cuango, Capenda Camulemba, Lucapa, Lubalo, Lóvua and Xá-muteba.

Source: Angola Press News Agency