Desidério Costa

Desidério Costa, 2008

Desidério da Graça Veríssimo e Costa (born April 4, 1934 in Luanda ) is an Angolan politician . He was Minister of Oil from 2002 to 2008 and Chairman of the Association of African Petroleum Producers (APPA) from 2005 to 2006.

Life

Desidério da Costa was born as the son of the railway worker Fernando Pascoal da Costa, who was considered a "civilizado" according to the laws of the Portuguese colonial rule at the time and was therefore a legal Portuguese citizen (in contrast to the Africans who were almost completely without rights until 1962). At the end of the 1950s, Desidério Costa was in Portugal to prepare for a medical degree. He did not return from a trip to Germany because his father, who was one of the founding members of the MPLA , had been arrested and charged in one of the three trials of campaigning for Angola's independence from Portuguese colonial rule . Fernando Pascoal da Costa was sentenced to several years in a labor camp, which he spent in the Cape Verde Islands , in the Chao Bom labor camp near Tarrafal .

Desidério Costa feared falling into the hands of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal as a member of the dreaded PIDE secret police . He found refuge in the family of a doctor in Lüdenscheid , where he also worked in a factory and learned German .

Desidério Costa served in the early 1960s as president of UGEAN ( União Geral dos Estudiantes because Africa Negra sob dominacão colonial portuguesa ), based in Rabat ( Morocco ). He already belonged to the inner core of the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) before Agostinho Neto became its president. In the mid-1960s he ended his political activity to study petroleum science at the Montanuniversität Leoben so that after the independence of his country, local specialists would be available for this important industry. The Montanuniversität Leoben is a technical university in Leoben, Austria . She specializes in mining , metallurgy and materials engineering. From 1980 to 1981 Desidério da Costa deepened his education in Cambridge , Massachusetts , USA .

After independence from Portugal, he became a member of the National Commission for the Restructuring of the Petroleum Industry from 1976 to 1977 , then Deputy Director General of Sonangol from 1977 to 1979, then National Director for Petroleum from 1982 to 1984 and Deputy Minister for Petroleum from 1984 to 2002. Over the years, the departments of the petroleum industry were integrated into various ministries - industry, energy, mineral resources - until they were merged into an independent ministry in 2002. In the new cabinet, which was formed on October 3, 2008 after the Angolan parliamentary elections in September 2008, Desidério Costa was replaced by his predecessor José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos .

Desiderio Costa now works as a consultant for the oil industry and is a member of the supervisory board of Banco Africano de Investimentos , (BAI). He is married and has five children.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Desidério da Costa is welcomed by the Federal Minister for Economics and Technology in Berlin  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. April 24, 2008  
2. ↑ Desidério da Costa at the OPEC meeting in Vienna  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. September 9, 2008  
3. ^ List of the accused in the brochure "Le Procès des Cinquante", Brussels 1960
4. ↑ In Angola crude oil has been produced since the 1950s, since 1955 by the Belgian Petrofina .

swell

• Christmas edition of the Westfälische Rundschau for Lüdenscheid, 1959
• Who's who on Angola Pitigrili website
• Der Spiegel: Personal data Desidério da Costa May 5, 2008