Analysis: Angola's peace dividend

Savimbi (right) was an influential figure in the region

By the BBC's southern Africa analyst Keith Somerville

The death of Unita rebel leader Jonas Savimbi could start a process of pacification in Angola and clear obstacles to wider peace and development in central and southern Africa.

Savimbi led a guerrilla movement which has been active for much of the last 30 years, and which for the last 27 years has been fighting the government of Angola.

A more peaceful Angola would also bring one step nearer the plans for much wider economic, energy and transport co-operation between southern and central African states

It became a focus for intervention there by the old apartheid government in South Africa and by the US during the last 15 years of the Cold War.

Savimbi's movement has been involved in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, too, and has served to ruin relations between Angola and some of its neighbours.

Chance for peace

Once described by a biographer as a key to Africa, Jonas Savimbi has been an ever-present and, some would say, malignant factor in southern African politics for nearly 40 years.

His death removes a major obstacle to the establishment of peace and the achievement of the dream of co-ordinated economic development across the region.

Angola has suffered years of war

The most immediate impact would obviously be in Angola where the on-off war between the government and Unita is likely to come to a much more rapid end.

This in turn could lead to the first real chance since independence in 1975 for the development in Angola of something approaching an accountable and truly national government.

Regionally it will immediately improve relations between Angola and Zambia - soured by the Angola Government's suspicion of Zambian support for Unita.

Economic development

A man of huge potential, but a potential that had in the end worked to the detriment of his country and his continent

The disappearance or even just the decline of Unita would also remove one complicating outside factor from the tangled web of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And a more peaceful Angola would bring one step nearer the plans for much wider economic, energy and transport co-operation between southern and central African states.

A series of military defeats by the Angolan army made Savimbi a declining political and military asset in recent years and he had gradually been deserted, at least publicly, by countries which were once staunch supporters, such as Ivory Coast and Morocco.

His disappearance from the African scene removes once and for all a man of huge potential, but a potential that had in the end worked to the detriment of his country and his continent.