Angola

A Portuguese colony held for five centuries, then a proxy war, then oil. The kingdom of Kongo dealt with Portugal as a recognised state from the 1480s, its ruler converting and exchanging ambassadors, before the slave trade wrecked the relationship - Angola supplied more captives to the Americas than any other region, several million people over three centuries, and Brazil's population reflects it. Queen Njinga fought Portugal for decades in the seventeenth century. Portugal did not control the interior until the twentieth century and then ran forced labour on coffee and cotton estates. The liberation war from 1961 split three ways along regional and ethnic lines, and when independence came in November 1975 the movements went straight into civil war: the MPLA held Luanda with Cuban troops and Soviet arms, UNITA held the interior with American and South African backing, and the war ran until Jonas Savimbi was killed in 2002. It killed perhaps half a million people and left the country among the most heavily mined on earth. Oil offshore from Cabinda funds the state. The MPLA has governed continuously since 1975. Portuguese is the official language and is widely spoken as a first language. The country has about thirty-six million people and is the seventh largest in Africa. Luanda has repeatedly ranked among the most expensive cities in the world for expatriates. Cabinda, which holds much of the oil, is an exclave separated by Congolese territory. Kizomba and semba are its best-known musical exports. The country joined OPEC in 2007 and left in 2024.

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