The number of Angolans in Portugal increased by more than 50% in 10 years

The number of Angolan citizens residing in Portugal has increased by more than 50% in the last 10 years, rising from 20,366 in 2012 to 31,435 in 2022, according to data from the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) compiled by Lusa.

Angola was among the top five most representative nationalities in Portugal on December 31, 2012, after Brazil, Ukraine, Cape Verde, and Romania, with a total of 20,366 resident citizens.

Ten years later, another 11,069 Angolans chose Portugal to reside in, totaling 31,435, of which more than half preferred Lisbon (17,440), followed by Setúbal (5,821) and Porto (2,285).

The cities of Braga (905), Santarém (893), and Coimbra, with 712 citizens, have less than a thousand Angolans living.

Madeira (40), Azores (41), Porto Alegre (57), and Guarda (59) are the places that register the smallest number of resident Angolan citizens.

Last year’s data, made available to Lusa by the SEF, show that most Angolans living in Portugal are young people between 20 and 39, totaling 12,158 citizens.

Angolans between the ages of 40 and 64 (10,150 citizens) were the second largest age group residing in Portugal in 2022.

At least 7,071 Angolans up to age 19 resided in Portugal last year, and there were also 308 Angolans aged 80 and over.

According to the SEF, 54 Angolans requested international protection in 2022 but were not accepted by the Portuguese immigration authorities because they were “unfounded.”

There is a growing desire in Luanda, especially among young people, to emigrate to Portugal, which they consider the “gateway to Europe,” in search of better living conditions, from studies and employment, for “lack of hope” in the African country.

Angola’s “lack of hope” motivated young people to create the so-called “Civic Movement Let’s Leave Angola”, which focused on exchanging information about emigration, with Canada, Turkey, Portugal, and Brazil among the intended destinations.

The movement, created a month ago by more than 20 young students and workers, who also wish to emigrate, serves as a channel of information on internal and external procedures to emigrate, from the treatment of the passport to the visa for the destination country, as previously reported by Lusa.

Dozens of Angolans, primarily young people, crowded in endless lines at the facilities at the new visa center for Portugal in Luanda, searching for information, passports, and/or visa applications to Portugal.

The Angolan sociologist Luzia Moniz considered last week that the “exodus” of “qualified” Angolan youths and their families to Portugal and other parts of Europe is a result of the current political and economic “misgovernment” of the country, fearing a “recolonization” in Angola.

According to Luzia Moniz, the current emigration of young Angolans, with “frustrated hope” for the general elections of 2022, is different from that recorded in the second half of the 1980s, where they, the majority less qualified, emigrated to escape alignment with the war.

“That’s why they were the least qualified, and that’s why almost all or most of them ended up in jobs, like public and private works, exactly because of this lack of qualification,” he told Lusa.

Today the phenomenon “is different, people are not fleeing from an eventuality of going to the battlefield, but they are fleeing from the lack of social, economic, and political conditions in the country,” he pointed out.

“The misgovernance, this wrong model that the country has adopted in political and economic terms, is what leads a lot of youth now to flee,” pointed out the journalist also based in Portugal.

With information from Lusa