1. With 36 years in the market and thousands of completed projects across Southern Africa since 1989 — spanning transport infrastructure, energy systems and water supply — SOAPRO has helped shape Angola’s engineering landscape. What do you consider to have been the company’s most important milestone so far, and what are you most proud of?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
SOAPRO is an Angolan company. It was founded in Angola on November 22, 1989. SOAPRO stands for Sociedade Angolana de Projetos, and that is where the acronym comes from.

As mentioned, SOAPRO has 36 years of history and more than 3,500 projects. What we are most proud of is not one specific project, but the consistency we have been able to maintain. Our strategy and our position are based on the quality of what we do.

Whether it is a large project or a small project, we want our brand to be clearly visible. We want our clients to feel that, when they hire us, we are helping them deliver their projects on time, with quality and within budget. That has been our path.

What I believe is also very relevant is that every time we hire people and they feel they are entering a company that is a reference in the market, that is always an important milestone. Every person we hire, every person we invite to join us, is a milestone.

We have completed around 4,000 projects, but it is very difficult to say that one project is better than another. The greatest impact comes from people: people who join, people who make a difference, people we invite to become directors, and people we invite to become partners in the company.

When we see someone grow within the company, that is always an important moment for us. It is a sign that we are doing good work internally.

2. SOAPRO has expanded its architecture, engineering and asset valuation business lines. This growth aligns with the current Annual National Development Plan, which includes more than 8,000 infrastructure actions across the country. Which operational indicators best reflect the company’s growth and ability to meet this increasing demand?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
For some time now, we have tried to make innovation part of all our processes. We have been quality certified for many years, and we effectively try to ensure that the main national and international clients work with us.

We want to be involved in the main projects and work with the main clients. What makes us proud is when a major international client wants to enter the Angolan market, works with us, and we clearly bring value.

The National Development Plan is an important tool for us because it helps us understand whether the country’s strategy is focused more on railways or on electrical infrastructure, for example. That allows us to prepare ourselves with the technical capacity to support those projects.

We clearly need to be aligned with the future development strategies of the country, and we need to adjust. We are a private company, so we also need to understand where the business is. If the business is aligned with our DNA as an engineering, architecture and consulting company, then we prepare ourselves for that.

At the moment, we are preparing to become a national reference in railways. We have already hired people and are training the team in that direction, so that when opportunities appear, we are able to respond.

We have that responsibility: to demonstrate that we are prepared for the future and for the country’s major projects. It is not enough to say, “I would like to participate.” We need to take the previous step, which is to look at the future, understand where the country is going, and prepare the company accordingly.

3. SOAPRO recently presented its engineering expertise at the 2nd International Conference on Energy and Water in Angola, where the government reinforced its commitment to expanding the national power grid. What were the main takeaways from this event, and how could they influence SOAPRO’s role in future utility projects?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
We are an infrastructure company, so in water and energy we have participated, as I mentioned, in some of the main projects.

At that conference, we presented a map of Angola showing all the future electricity projects that exist, as well as their connections and points of convergence. This is a project we want to put at the service of the State. The idea is to better understand substations, large production centers and consumption centers, so that we can build a clearer matrix of who consumes and who produces energy.

Angola has a very important energy matrix, especially in renewable energy, mainly hydropower, and now also solar. At the moment, Angola does not yet have the capacity to export energy. There are many countries around us in sub-Saharan Africa that want to buy energy from Angola.

Angola therefore has an increased responsibility to prepare itself to become an energy power, not only in oil and gas, but also in electricity.

4. SOAPRO has positioned itself as a pioneer by making BIM mandatory, at a time when the Ministry of Public Works is raising technical standards across the sector. How is the company approaching digital transformation today, and what advantages do these platforms bring to complex projects?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
We have been working with BIM for many years. Before that, AutoCAD was the main tool, but we moved to BIM quite some time ago, even if that sometimes means that, when we deliver projects to clients, we have to convert them back into AutoCAD so they can read them.

Here at SOAPRO, technology is a reference for us. We have an app through which our clients can see projects, photographs and weekly reports online. Our clients can consult the projects they have with us through that app.

We also have worksites that operate with paper zero. Meeting minutes and reports are already signed on tablets and then sent digitally. This has been part of our DNA for many years.

Every day, we need to reinvent ourselves to become more efficient and to do more in less time. Now, with artificial intelligence, which has become so widespread and democratic, everyone is using it.

Companies have a responsibility to understand how to effectively transform this into a tool for efficiency. It is clear that all of us will use artificial intelligence tools in one way or another. There is no way around that.

In our DNA, in the area of project design and BIM, modeling is already a reality. We have trained all our architects and engineers in this tool, and I believe this is the future.

5. Through its Agri-Cultura Social project in Cacuaco, SOAPRO supports local farmers across eight hectares of land, reinforcing its commitment to community development. What impact has this initiative achieved so far, and how important are community development and local talent cultivation to the company’s long-term vision?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
We have several social responsibility projects. One of them is Agri-Cultura Social in Cacuaco. What we do there is create two areas with professional farmers, and then we divide land for community farmers, more focused on subsistence.

The professional farmers are required to train women from the community, and those women then farm for their own consumption. They also have to donate 10% to charitable institutions. We provided the land, the electricity, the water and the training.

But we have other projects as well. We have a library project across the country with Standard Bank. We have Brinquedoteca, which provides play spaces in pediatric hospitals. We have DIMUCA, which takes children to our construction sites to be engineers for a day. We also have UNIFICA, which gives final-year university students practical experience on our worksites.

So we have several social responsibility projects. Flávia, who is here with us, is our social responsibility coordinator.

We truly believe these are long-term projects. We do not believe in projects that are just greenwashing. Basically, we approach social responsibility from the perspective of collective responsibility within our team.

All of us need to have some activity that complements our work. We encourage everyone to have a hobby and a social dimension, because only in that way can we achieve balance between work life, professional life and personal life.

Social responsibility is part of our DNA in everything we do. Agri-Cultura Social is a very interesting project because every month we deliver lettuce and vegetables to everyone here at SOAPRO, and those products come from our own farm.

6. SOAPRO has established strategic partnerships with engineering firms in South Africa and Namibia to support the development of regional transport corridors. Could you tell us more about these collaborations and how they position SOAPRO for larger cross-border projects in the future? Are you also open to creating new partnerships?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
These partnerships are very important because we are seeing many cross-border projects in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Africa. We believe that only through partnerships can we effectively grow our work.

There are many cross-border projects, including railway projects, such as the rail corridors, energy projects, such as the power lines from Angola to Namibia, and dam projects, such as the Baynes Dam, which is also a cross-border project.

We believe that African companies should also have an important role in engineering in Africa. To achieve that, we need to bring different players together.

We brought together the largest engineering company in Namibia, a large company from South Africa, and SOAPRO, which for us is the best engineering company in Angola. If we bring those three efforts together, we can pursue more global projects in Africa.

It is an African consortium for projects in Africa. Basically, it is about joining forces so that we can be stronger and work on the major projects that Africa has.

7. Your extensive career and management experience have helped drive corporate growth, major infrastructure projects and important international partnerships. How have these experiences shaped your leadership philosophy, and what legacy would you ultimately like to leave for the next generation?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
Leading and being at the head of a company is always about managing uncertainty and managing the unknown. We never know whether the decisions we are making are right, because they are always decisions for the future. Whether we should invest in a certain product or service, we do not know for sure.

That is why I believe we need to be very clear about what we want in terms of values, project, impact and the people around us. We need to understand what we have, what we want to have and what our strategy is.

I lead a lot through people. I am less about Excel and more about purpose. We have this purpose, and we need to ask who currently has the energy to move forward with that purpose, and then we move forward.

When a project is presented to me, I always ask who is leading that project. If it is a person with leadership capacity, the project will go well, even if the Excel sheet is not perfect.

I believe that managing a company is managing people. Managing clients, managing partners, managing employees, managing colleagues — it is all about managing people.

At a time when knowledge and information are very close to everyone, I believe emotional intelligence, critical thinking and interpersonal relationships are fundamental. Training in leadership, management and innovation is therefore essential.

Increasingly, companies need people who understand innovation and can manage innovation platforms, but also people who can build the interpersonal relationships needed to attract the best talent into the company.

8. In your opinion, what would you tell our readers about the investment opportunities Angola has to offer today? What can they expect when they come here?

Sérgio Dias de Sousa:
I believe Angola needs to move from a short-term investment mindset to a long-term investment mindset. Investors need to look more at concession opportunities, meaning staying in the country for 20 or 30 years to operate a dam, an electrical system, a water supply system, ports, roads or buildings.

Basically, I believe Angola currently has one thing to offer, and that is commitment. Angola has never failed to honor its external payments, even though domestically there have been challenges with payment timelines, which are being addressed.

Angola has oil, rare minerals and stability, but I also believe there will be less easy money. Angola will need to attract investors who want to stay here for a longer period.

Because of the issue of instability often associated with Africa, people tend to look for very short paybacks. I believe Angola needs to work on changing that, and we are already seeing examples. At the Port of Luanda, we have DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports. At the Port of Lobito, we have AGL, with concessions of around 15 years.

We are already beginning to see international players who want to stay here for 5, 10, 15 or 20 years.

I believe Angola needs to reinvent itself and be more selective about where it invests its money, because money is finite. There is no point in trying to do every project and then not finishing any of them because there is not enough money for all of them.

We need to have a clear definition of priorities. The priority is diversifying the economy and reducing dependence on oil. I believe that path is being followed, but we effectively need to attract international investors who want to invest for the long term. That is fundamental for Angola.