Peacebuilding Through the Airwaves

Angola achieved its independence in 1975 after a protracted liberation war against Portugal.  After independence,  Angola embraced communism and unfortunately became the scene of more fighting between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), led first by Agostinho Neto and then by Jose Eduardo dos Santos, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) led by Jonas Savimbi. The civil war eventually ended in the year 2002 after claiming more than 1.5 million lives over 27 years, and this was the period that I was born and raised in. Unfortunately,  although the end of the civil war was expected to mark a significant change in the lives of ordinary Angolans, I made the hard decision to leave my homeland. To me, it seemed that the situation in my country, rather than improving, was rather getting worse.  

In 2005, I decided to move to the United States of America instead of Portugal or Brazil where many Angolans had relocated because of the effects of the civil war. For me, while growing up, the United States had come to represent a beacon of what democracy ought to be, and I wanted to experience this system for the first time in my life.  When I arrived in October 2005,  I dedicated my time mainly to learn English as a second language because it was my first time to learn or take English classes. This learning process took two years but, in the meantime, I managed to survive in the United States by speaking Spanish that I learned when I was younger by watching television shows.  After receiving my certification in English, I enrolled in college. In the summer of 2009, I earned my Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Northern Virginia Community College and in the fall, I was accepted to George Mason University where I was able to earn my Bachelors degree in Government and International Politics in the spring of 2011.  A year later, I was accepted to Mason's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR).
I chose to join the S-CAR community because during my undergrad work, I realized that the transition from formal peace to social peace in Angola would take a long time and would require many people with the political will and skills to consolidate this transition.  As such, S-CAR was the place where I saw this hope in terms of learning the skills and tools needed to help my country.

By the start of 2014, I had acquired so much knowledge from my studies that I decided to form an NGO called Friends of Angola in order to help raise the consciousness of the world community about the challenge of the Republic of Angola and to support Angolan civil society, as I realized that many people in the United States did not know about the political and social challenges that Angolans were facing. This non-profit was created to help educate many about Angola and to empower Angolan civil society in order to build a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous society. A few months after forming Friends of Angola, I decide to also start a radio station called Radio Angola, in order to create a platform and space where everyone, in particular Angolan youth, could talk about any issue that they were facing. This move proved to be very popular and so far, we have had 87 radio shows with more than 28,000 people tuning in to listen to our shows. Due to the restrictions imposed by the government of Angola on traditional media such as national print and televised news that are controlled by government, many Angolans do not have the space where they can critically discuss issues that are not in the government’s interest. So this project (Radio Angola) provides such a space, as well as a voice to the voiceless, a technique that I learned in one of my classes at S-CAR to bring about change. Some of the popular topics that we discuss on Radio Angola relate to the role of youth social movements as agents of social, political and economic change, democracy, human rights, domestic violence, corruption, transparency, the consequences of political intolerance, and the role of civil society.

Friends of Angola is without a doubt in its infancy and we plan to create more projects to help to continue empowering Angolan civil society in order to build a peaceful, democratic and prosperous society. Links to Friends of Angola link: http://www.friendsofangola.org; Radio Angola link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radioangola