In 2012, an Angolan hospital doctor, Dr. Almeida Chitungo, made a dramatic appeal for outside help. The “government is trying hard to replenish food stuffs but it is being overwhelmed by the demand of supplementary food to almost all hospitals in provinces hit by the drought,” a 2012 fundraising piece posted on the Christian charity World Vision’s website quoted him as saying. “We need partners to urgently come to our rescue with supplies of supplementary food like milk and flour, otherwise children’s lives are at stake here.”
Others were less convinced that the main culprit was drought or that the Angolan government was “trying hard” to help its people but unable to afford milk and flour, let alone that more donor funds were the answer.
In the same year World Vision was urgently appealing for more outside money to save children’s lives, a whopping $32 billion were not properly accounted for in Angola’s public finances, causing Human Rights Watch and the National Resource Governance Institute to publicly call on the International Monetary Fund to withhold a scheduled loan disbursement.