The current Experimental Station of the National Coffee Institute of Angola (INCA), in Gabela, Cuanza-Sul province, will be transformed, in the near future, into a scientific research center for this product, cocoa and palm trees, informed, on Saturday, the minister of Agriculture and Forestry, António de Assis.
“We have a rehabilitation project for the station, and, following a visit to Ivory Coast, we designed an action plan to transform it into the main scientific research center in Angola, in terms of coffee, cocoa and palm trees,” he said. , alluding to the experience of other African countries. The government official was speaking during an inspection visit to the infrastructure facilities receiving works.
The requalification of the aforementioned station includes, among others, the installation of soil, biotechnology, entomology and phytopathology laboratories, which will lead to the placement of more technicians in these specialties. Coffee production in the municipality of Amboim increased around 1923, with the completion of the railway, reaching, at the time, seven thousand tons, which were stored and exported to Portugal, as well as other countries in the region. America and Europe.
In 1960, production rose to 14 thousand tons and in the 1970s it reached 40 thousand tons, but after national independence it fell and it was only between 1980 and 1990 that between 700 and a thousand tons began to be produced in this location, respectively. Of the 170 coffee farms registered in the municipality, only 30 percent produce regularly, including peasants and agricultural companies, in an area of more than two thousand five hundred hectares.