THEY seemed little more than a collection of empty suits:

smartly-dressed men of great power and personal wealth whose blank looks and awkward demeanour belied their status as leading political officials and company chief executives.

In fact, they were former military generals from the victorious Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, inserted into top jobs at the end of the bloody civil war that ravaged the country for more than a quarter of a century.

Now, more than a decade on, they are still in post as the country's oil boom bestows untold wealth on the ruling elite and their well-educated offspring become the latest generation to secure positions of influence.

The evidence is that nepotism has not worked for the majority of the population of Angola, who live in abject poverty despite the vast offshore oil reserves coveted by China and America.

In a recent article on the country's increasingly close ties with China, Financial Times investigative reporter Tom Burgis pointed out: "Angola rivals Nigeria as Africa's biggest oil producer ... but, while the presidential coterie has grown fabulously wealthy, UN analysis indicates that few countries have done a worse job of turning economic growth into improved living standards for the many."

It was this poverty, rather than the empty handshakes of shadowy senior officials, that left the most lasting impression on me after a visit to Angola last month to report on the opening of a new training centre for the maritime industry, staffed and run in partnership with a Scottish college.

Throughout our six-hour bus journey along the coastal road from the capital Luanda to the small town of Sumbe, near where the facility has been built, we saw families scratching out a living in the red dust along the roadside, homes built from mud or sheets of corrugated metal, small bowls of corn and bananas for sale on battered tables or chairs.

Children played in the dry earth with no evidence of the universal schooling promised by the government. In cities, the dusty roadside gave way to broken pavements and mile upon mile of shanty town slums. But there was also development. Roads and railways built by the Chinese in return for oil were in evidence, as were new public buildings and social housing.

Then there were the blocks of flats for overseas workers and the million-dollar beach-front properties for the emerging middle classes.

There was hope, too, in the purpose-built £65 million maritime training centre paid for by state-run oil company Sonangol and global shipping giant Stena, but run by staff from City of Glasgow College.

The creation of this impressive facility provides for the first time a training centre that will teach hundreds of young Angolans the skills required for a career at sea, utilising talents that will be recognised across the globe.

If this recognition that state action is required to address a shortage of skills is to be replicated in other areas of the economy, then perhaps Angola has a brighter future.