As Angola prepares to host an Opec meeting for the first time, the country has done its best to welcome fellow nations of the oil cartel – a new convention centre, a five star hotel and villas for the ministers on the outskirts of the capital, Luanda.

The display of wealth – and the contrast with poverty elsewhere – could backfire, however. The country is Opec’s biggest buster of the cartel’s official production limits, something Luanda justifies on the grounds of its dire economic situation.

Angola, the group newest member, wrote a letter earlier this year to the Opec secretariat asking for exemption from current quotas on the ground that the African nation is grappling with the impact of a 30-year civil war which only ended in 2002.