Judgement day for the African state that is getting rich quick

In the central square, a group of teenagers compare quad bikes. Couples hold hands by a fountain. Children sit in wonderment beneath images on a giant television screen. A woman contemplates four brightly coloured plastic recycling bins, and comments that they are far too nice to use.

It could be Legoland but incredibly it is Huambo, the war-ravaged town in central Angola where Diana, Princess of Wales, cleared mines in 1997.

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Today, in the country's first parliamentary election for 16 years, voters will decide whether this and other makeovers are make-believe. Or whether Angola, through shrewd management of its oil boom, has turned its back on poverty that ends life expectancy at 42 and has two-thirds of the population living on less than $2 (£1) a day.

The former Portuguese colony's latest economic statistics are remarkable. Annual growth exceeds 20 per cent. Inflation stands at 12 per cent. At two billion barrels a day, Angola is sub-Saharan Africa's main oil producer and China's leading supplier. Luanda's skyline is made up of cranes and skyscrapers under construction. A new town of 700 Miami-style condominium blocks has sprung up south of the capital. Property prices are the world's highest per square metre and doubling every year.

"Immigration is soaring. We expect 50,000 new expats to settle in Angola every year for the next three years. The building boom cannot keep up," said Luanda estate agent Cleber Correa.

Hummers and other SUVs outnumber saloon cars. Two thousand vehicles are imported every seven days on ships that queue for three weeks to dock in Luanda. Flights and hotels are fully booked until November. Louis Vuitton is opening a shop a near the day spa on the seafront.

"Angola is an investor's dream," said Mr Correa. "It is the size of France, Spain and the United Kingdom put together and yet it is sparsely populated, resource-rich and safe. The government is very business-friendly."

Apart from oil – which accounts for 90 per cent of exports – Angola has massive reserves of diamonds, uranium, iron ore and phosphates. It is only six years since decades of civil strife ended with the death of Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita). Before then, 500,000 people were killed in successive wars since 1961. They left a legacy of landmines, 11,000 of which are being cleared a year.

The ruling party, in power since 1975, claims that since the end of fighting, it has begun an unprecedented development boom that will create a middle class with the trickle-down spending power to end poverty. "Since 2002, we have built 2,400km of roads and more than 200 major bridges. We have constructed 200 hospitals and 30,000 classrooms. This shows that we are much more than a political party,'' said Rui Pinto de Andrade, propaganda director for the formerly Marxist Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

Angola's boom began in 2002, after the MPLA government turned its back on pedantic Western donors and mortgaged the country's oil to China. The resulting loans are estimated to have raised $3bn for reconstruction.

Mr Pinto de Andrade confidently predicts a 90 per cent turnout in today's elections, with more than 63 per cent of seats going to the MPLA. President José Eduardo Dos Santos, who has been in power for 29 years – a year more than Robert Mugabe – will stand for election next year.

Not everyone is delighted with the government's Stalinist planning excesses. "The elections are unlikely to be fair," said Georgette Gagnon of Human Rights Watch. "During the pre-campaign period, we documented abuses including intimidation of the media, interference in the electoral commission, and violent incidents against the opposition."

Several leading Portuguese media outlets accused Angola yesterday of restricting their ability to cover the election, and called into question the credibility of the vote. Portugal's second-largest television channel, SIC, said its journalists and other media had been prevented from covering the poll because Angolan authorities had denied them visas.

The MPLA has spent an estimated $30m on pre-election freebies: it is easier to get an MPLA hat, cap or scarf than a square meal. The boundaries between government, nation and party are blurred. The MPLA's colours are the same red, black and yellow as the national flag. In a "how-to" television broadcast by the National Electoral Commission, a voter is shown placing his cross in the box by the MPLA logo.

"We expect major fraud," said Simon Kanda, a candidate for one of 13 opposition coalitions and parties. "We are especially worried because of a provision allowing people to vote in polling stations other than their own.

"Those ballots will be moved to the voters' 'home' polling stations for counting, which opens up a huge opportunity for fraud."

Election observers have arrived from the African Union, the Pan-African Parliament, the EU and the US. But judging from the world's hunger to invest, there is no pressure on them to highlight failings in the electoral process.

The Angolan ruling party is canny and centrally-cohesive. Dos Santos counts democracy among necessary attributes for attracting investment. For that reason, the presidency wants the election process run by the book.

It is undeniable, though, that the playing field is not level. "The campaign was launched a month ago," said Alcides Sakala who heads the Unita bloc in parliament. "We are very short of funds."

But he hopes for a large turnout and believes Angola's 15 million population has not entirely bought into the government's reconstruction offensive. "Building schools and hospitals is one thing. But you need teachers and nurses to put in them. The MPLA has invested a lot in the run-up to the elections. That is why some building work is shoddy. For instance the President came to Huambo to inaugurate the library. But it has no books. That's one of the paradoxes."

Angola: Africa's rising oil giant

* Angola covers an area of 1,246,700 sq km.

* Its first language is Portuguese.

* José Eduardo Dos Santos has been President since 21 September, 1979.

* It has a population of 17 million.

* In the past year, the GDP grew by 21.1 per cent.

* Its infant mortality rate is 154 deaths per 1,000 live births. In the UK it is 5.

* Life expectancy is 42 years.

* Oil provides 85 per cent of GDP.

* Its natural resources include petroleum, diamonds, iron ore, phosphates, copper, gold, feldspar, bauxite and uranium.

* These are the first elections in the country for 16 years.

* Its economy grew 24 per cent last year, the fastest in the world.

* Luanda has replaced Tokyo as the world's most expensive capital.

* In three years, Angola's oil output will match that of Kuwait.

* It is China's main oil supplier.

* Unemployment runs at between 40 and 60 per cent.

* It has 8 million registered voters.

* The ruling party, the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) has 3.5million members.

* The main opposition party is Unita (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola).