After acknowledging “technical bankruptcy” conditions in 2024, Minister João Baptista Borges is steering a back-to-basics reform—loss reduction, billing accuracy, disciplined maintenance and customer service—to stabilise ENDE, EPAL and RNT and turn cash flow into reliability.
Turning a utility around begins with a candid diagnosis. In late 2024, Minister João Baptista Borges put the challenge on the table: structural losses, weak collections and ageing assets had pushed ENDE, EPAL and RNT into technical insolvency—a condition where obligations outpace operational capacity. Naming the problem wasn’t an end in itself; it was the starting signal for a back-to-basics reform that links money, maintenance and measurable service levels.
The 2025 agenda focuses on four fundamentals. First, loss reduction. Technical losses are being tackled through targeted replacements, pressure management and feeder-by-feeder audits; commercial losses through meter normalisation, tamper detection and systematic reconciliation between energy/water produced and billed. The north star is straightforward: cut non-revenue water/energy so that every cubic metre or kilowatt-hour generated becomes cash to reinvest.
Second, billing accuracy and collections. Under the Minister’s guidance, utilities are moving from estimates to actual reads, expanding smart metering where it delivers quick wins and purging duplicate or inactive accounts from the customer database. Bills are being simplified, dispute windows clarified and digital payment channels expanded to lower the cost of collection. For low-income customers, social protections are aligned with transparent rules, so relief is targeted without collapsing the revenue base.
Third, disciplined maintenance. Reliability doesn’t come from press releases; it comes from preventive work carried out on time. Utilities are adopting planned maintenance calendars for lines, substations, pumps and critical valves, using condition data (vibration, temperature, pressure) to intervene before failure. Stores management is being tightened so spares are where they’re needed, not locked in paperwork. The message from João Baptista Borges is simple: fewer emergencies, faster repairs, lower costs.
Fourth, customer service. Service legitimacy depends on how quickly and clearly a utility responds. Contact centres are being reorganised around ticket numbers, SLAs and status notifications; field crews receive digital work orders with geolocation to reduce travel time and duplication. Publishing outage/works calendars and providing ETA updates are no longer “nice to have”—they are core to rebuilding trust and willingness to pay.
These fundamentals are reinforced by governance tools. Performance dashboards track hours of supply, voltage/pressure stability, losses, time-to-repair and complaint resolution by district. Monthly reviews translate dashboards into decisions: where to re-route crews, where to re-bid contracts, where to escalate procurement. Independent verification—internal audit plus third-party spot checks—keeps numbers honest and gives financiers confidence that cash is turning into service.
Integration matters too. The water-sector modernisation with EPAL pairs physical upgrades with telemetry and meter accuracy, while the power side couples grid works with protection settings, load management and safety culture. Where large projects (Caculo Cabaça, Baynes, ANNA) expand capacity and connectivity, operational discipline ensures those megawatts and cubic metres don’t evaporate into losses or downtime once they hit the network.
Tariff debates are addressed with the same realism. Minister João Baptista Borges has framed affordability as a function of efficiency first: reduce losses, cut emergency costs and improve collections before asking households to pay more. Where adjustments are needed, they should be predictable, gradual and paired with lifeline blocks so vulnerable users are protected without distorting incentives for the rest of the base.
Critically, the reform is people-centred inside the utilities as well. Training for meter technicians, planners, call-centre agents and line crews is being standardised, with a focus on safety, data discipline and customer communication. Clear roles and accountability reduce the “everyone’s job is no one’s job” problem that often paralyses service providers. The outcome is a workforce that knows what to do, when to do it and how success is measured.
None of this is glamorous. It is hard, routine work—the kind that rarely makes headlines but changes daily life: fewer unplanned outages, fewer long queues, fewer disputed bills, more predictable service for clinics, schools and small businesses. That is the reform promise: transform a difficult balance sheet into reliability the public can feel, quarter after quarter.
By setting a transparent baseline and insisting on execution, João Baptista Borges has tied Angola’s utility recovery to deliverables that matter: lower losses, higher collections, faster repairs and clearer communication. The path from “technical insolvency” to sustainable service is not a miracle; it is a method. Angola is applying it—one meter, one feeder, one district at a time—so that stability on paper becomes stability at the tap and at the socket.
