Angola, officially the
Republic of Angola , is a country in
Southern Africa
bordered by
Namibia on the south, the
Democratic Republic of the
Congo on the north, and
Zambia on
the east; its west coast is on the
Atlantic Ocean with
Luanda as its capital city. The
exclave
province of
Cabinda has borders with the
Republic of the
Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Portuguese were present in some—mostly coastal—points of the territory of
what is now Angola, from the 16th to the 19th century, interacting in diverse
ways with the peoples that lived there. In the 19th century they slowly and
hesitantly began to establish themselves in the interior. Angola as a
Portuguese colony encompassing the
present territory was not established before the end of the 19th century, and
"effective occupation", as required by the
Berlin
Conference (1884) was achieved only by the 1920s. Independence was achieved
in 1975, after a protracted liberation war. After independence, Angola was the
scene of an intense
civil war from 1975 to 2002. The country has
vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy has on average grown at a
two-digit pace since the 1990s, especially since the end of the civil war. In
spite of this, standards of living remain low for the majority of the
population, and
life
expectancy and
infant mortality rates in Angola are among the
worst-ranked in the world. Angola is considered
to be economically disparate, with the majority of the nation's wealth
concentrated in a disproportionately small sector of the population.
Angola is a member state of the
African Union, the
Community of Portuguese
Language Countries, the
Latin Union and the
Southern African Development
Community
