Angolan Riches Lure New Wave of Workers

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Nearly 35 years after winning independence from Portugal, Angola is being populated by its former colonizer once again -- this time by professionals and scores of workers laid off amid the economic slump.

Luis Amaro, a sales manager for Lisbon-based software company LocalSoft, saw the opportunity in July when he went to Angola on a business trip.

"Things are happening here. I can build a new life," Mr. Amaro remembered thinking. He plans to move to Luanda at the end of this year with his wife and teenage son.

He will leave behind his native Portugal, which has been hard hit by the global downturn. Unemployment in the second quarter was 9.2% and the economy is expected to shrink by 3.7% this year. Temporary and seasonal construction work in other European Union countries -- a mainstay for Portuguese laborers -- have been drying up. As workers from across Europe return to Portugal, a country of 10.6 million, they struggle to find jobs.

Portugal's former colony, meanwhile, has emerged in recent years as one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Angola's gross domestic product has grown well over 10% annually since 2004, and topped 20% in 2007, bolstered by oil production and mining. Even with the drop in oil prices in 2008, GDP grew 14.8% for the year.

Keen to rebuild infrastructure destroyed by more than four decades of war, Angola, with a population of 12.8 million, has experienced an explosion in civil-engineering and construction projects.

Neither country's government keeps exact numbers, but economists say an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 Portuguese nationals like Mr. Amaro have entered Angola over the past five years, not counting trips of long-term residents or people staying on short-term work visas. Manual laborers, doctors, engineers and bankers have flocked to the country. Demand for visas is so high that the most desperate job-seekers camp out overnight to get at the front of the line at the Angolan consulate in Lisbon.

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