By US$141.9 million. That is the combined price of the contracts President João Lourenço authorised without any competition in the wave of presidential orders that broke over Angola in the last days of October 2026. Four of the five orders carry a price. The fifth hands out 117 kilometres of road building and names no price at all.
Every one of the five was made by contratação simplificada, the simplified contracting route that Angola's public contracts law reserves for exceptions, and that the President's own authorisations, issued on material grounds, free from any value ceiling. No tender was advertised for any of them. No rival bid was invited, received or beaten. Each one bears a single signature, the President's.
The largest is the oldest of the five. Despacho 374/26, dated 25 September 2026 and brought to public notice only on 30 October, hands the assisted maintenance of all 21 national airports, run by the state airport company SGA, to the China National Aero-Technology International Engineering Corporation, CAIEC/AVIC, for US$70.15 million over five years, the training and certification of Angolan technicians included. The justification recorded is SGA's own weak finances. The Minister of Transport was delegated to conclude the contract. No other firm was asked to price the work.
Despacho 397/26, published on 23 October, commits US$26.5 million to Grup Zdravexport, Consultancy Services – DWC – LLC, for 341 specialist doctors, roughly US$77,700 for each doctor, to sustain care in public hospitals and support the specialised training of Angolan doctors. Execution was delegated to the Minister of Health, Sílvia Lutucuta. Urgency and the continuity of hospital services are the grounds given. No hospital group, university or agency anywhere was invited to compete for the work.
It is not the first time this exact order has been placed. In 2023 the same company was authorised to supply the same 341 doctors at the same US$26.5 million, a deal denounced as an aberration when it surfaced. Three years on, the arrangement has been signed again, at the same headcount and the same price, again without a contest.
Beside the doctors in the same gazette issue of 23 October, Despacho 396/26 authorises Kz 2.57 billion, about US$2.7 million, for the services needed to prepare and stage the Africa Financial Industry Summit in Luanda on 3 and 4 November. No single contractor is named. The spending was delegated to the ministers of the multisectoral commission organising the summit, and it too went by simplified contracting.
Despacho 399/26, of 27 October, opens simplified contracting for the construction of the Alto Chicapa to Luma Cassai road, 117 kilometres across Lunda Sul province, together with the supervision of the works. The order names no contractor, fixes no deadline and states no price, for the road or for its supervision. The only kwanza figure attached to the project anywhere sits in a budget line covering a wider package of works around Luma Cassai, and it is not the price of this road.
Despacho 402/26, of 29 October, is priced, and priced heavily. It opens simplified contracting for five new provincial headquarters of the Procuradoria-Geral da República, the attorney general's service, in Cabinda, Cuando, Icolo e Bengo, Moxico Leste and Zaire, at Kz 35.7 billion, about US$37.5 million. Supervision of the works adds Kz 1.5 billion, about US$1.6 million. Studies and executive projects for a further 21 headquarters buildings nationwide add Kz 3.3 billion, about US$3.5 million. The package passes Kz 40.5 billion, about US$42.5 million, to be carried in the 2026 state budget and public investment programme. No builder is named. Execution was delegated to the attorney general himself.
The wave lands on ground already measured. Jornal Expansão's count of the gazette put the President's direct awards for January to September 2026 at US$20.2 billion across 443 despachos, up 240 per cent in value on the US$5.9 billion of the same months of 2025, with the ten largest contracts alone accounting for some US$8.2 billion. A SecretsReporters review of the orders that followed finds the machine still running at the same speed: five more signatures in a single week, four of them priced, one road unpriced, after the tally had closed. The wave has company in this series: in Ghana, SecretsReporters counted 81 road contracts handed out without a single contest, with US$1.86 billion piled on three firms (the Ghana sole-source investigation).
The Tribunal de Contas, in its opinion on the 2024 state accounts, had already warned that simplified contracting, exceptional in law, had become the most used procedure of all. October 2026 shows what that warning means in practice. No authority in Angola has explained why airports, doctors, summit services, prosecutors' buildings and 117 kilometres of road could not wait for a competition, or what a competition would have cost. The orders stand. The questions stand with them.
Follow Secrets Reporters on WhatsApp: join the channel for every exclusive the moment it publishes.
