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In colonial times they used to call Angola’s capital Luanda "the Rio de Janeiro of Africa". During the war, we used to describe Luanda as "decaying"; the handsome city, built by the Portuguese, on a sweeping bay over the Atlantic, had fallen on hard times—the Portuguese had fled, and their apartments were taken over by destitute refugees who poured in from the interior, where fighting raged. Water and electricity services broke down, piles of stinking rubbish collected on street corners.
    Today, I’m not sure how to describe Luanda. Certainly not "decaying". For the first time that I’ve seen, there are cranes over the city centre—a construction boom is underway. On the congested streets, cars crawl past the new South African fast-food restaurants. The flights into Luanda are full, and you fight to get a room in one of the few decent hotels. Smaller guest-houses are booked up months in advance. In the city centre the piles of rubbish have gone—the public squares swept clean, trees replanted, there’s even the odd fountain. The IMF says that Angola’s economy grew by more than 10 per cent last year; in Luanda that growth is tangible.
    And yet, I’m not sure that means very much to many people away from the city centre, which is ringed by vast slums. In Angola, they call them the musseques. They are, I think, the most depressing slums in all of Africa. Children wade through lakes of green and black sewage, families pick for scraps on the slopes of fetid mountains of rubbish. During the war, I used to wonder whether, when the fighting stopped, many of these people would go home to the countryside. Surely, I thought, it would be better to be growing your own crops in Angola’s fertile highlands, rather than struggling and toiling in these filthy shanty towns.
    Well, it’s been three years of peace now, and not many have chosen to go home. If anything, the flow of desperate people into Luanda seems to have accelerated.
    To find out why, we travelled into the interior by train. The Benguela railway was one of Africa’s great feats of engineerings—built by the British 100 years ago, it ran from the Atlantic all the way to the copper mines of the Congo and Rhodesia. But in the war trains were ambushed by rebels, bridges blown up, and land mines laid along the track. We met the director of the railway at the port of Lobito, where the line begins. The station yard is a graveyard of abandoned engines and carriages. But the director, Daniel Quipaxe, is not disheartened. Trains are now running along the first one hundred and fifty kilometres from the coast, through mountains covered in baobab trees, to the fanning towns beyond. Our train was packed—for thirty years it has been too dangerous for Angolans to travel around their own country—now they relish the opportunity to do so. I sat opposite a fourteen-year-old girl, Coleta, she was on her way to see her elder brother. It was Coleta’s first time on a train, her eyes were bright with excitement.
    The director, Mr. Quipaxe, says the rest of the railway, all the way to the Congo, will be repaired, and re-opened, within three years. It might happen, but the evidence of the past three years is that Angola’s government is taking a painfully long time to rebuild all that infrastructure destroyed in the war. The towns we visited further up the line, still waiting for the trains to reach them, are desperate, forlorn places. The railway stations are in ruins, the track overgrown with weeds and grass.
    "If the trains ran here, we could send our children to school, and send our crops to market," said Samuel, a struggling shopkeeper, amidst the ruins of a small town called Marco de Canavezes.
    If so little is being rebuilt in the countryside, it’s no surprise that people are still flocking towards Luanda.
    Back in the capital, in the slums, we met a very bright young student, Andre. He lives in a small dark shack, and is teaching himself English. I asked when he thought his neighbourhood would finally get running water and electricity. He said, "that depends on the government—they are the donos of this country."
    Donos, the Portuguese word, means owners. In theory Angola is a democracy—it’s even due to hold elections next year. In practice, it’s always been ruled by elites who seek to control, rather than serve, the majority. When Angolans stop thinking of their government as the owners, and start demanding a greater share of their country’s wealth, then the process of reconstruction can really gather steam.