Angola has agreed to be paid 75,000 in cows for a $100 million debt it is owed by Chad. The livestock will be given to the oil-rich country over 10 years for a debt that Chad contracted in 2017.
The BBC reported that the first installment of more than a thousand cows was transported by ship to the Angolan capital Luanda earlier this week.
The agreement, which is undoubtedly unusual in modern financial and commercial transactions, values each cow at $1,333.
Chad may reportedly send as many as 3,500 cows this month.
The proposal was agreed by Angola as an opportunity to grow its cattle population. Many areas in the country that have been affected by drought have been identified by the Angolan government.
Chad, on the other hand, is a country that has many pastoralist ethnic groups and apparently enough cattle to forfeit its debt.
The World Health Organisation of Animal Health is said to describe Chad as a “livestock farming country par excellence”. There are some 94 million cattle in that country that has just around 15 million people.
Although Chad is a landlocked country, livestock accounts for 30% of the country’s exports.
Angola is a country that is heavily dependent on its largely successful petrochemical industry as well as tourism.
Luanda is one of the most expensive cities on the continent but also a holiday destination for many Europeans, especially those from the Iberian peninsula.
