Angolan engineering company CNJ – União Engenharia e Comércio plans to invest US$65 million in building a factory to make towers for power transmission lines, according to official information.

The investment in question, according to a presidential order, will be carried out in the municipality of Cacuso, northern Malanje province, and comes at a time when the government of Angola is moving ahead with the electrification of the countryside.

The private company plans to set up a factory to manufacture steel structures for construction of steel towers, with the Angolan government, according to the order quoted by Lusa, negotiating trading “facilities and tax incentives” with the investor.

With a significant deficit of electricity production based on its needs, Angola still faces a lack of distribution networks to supply rural areas, and most of the country’s cities are supplied by networks of generators.

The population census conducted in 2014, whose final figures were revealed last March, found that access to the electricity grid is only guaranteed to 1.7 million homes (31.9 percent), almost exclusively in urban areas, as in rural areas only 48,000 households are served. (macauhub/AO)