Angola Travel Guide

Rich in natural resources (mainly oil, gas, manganese and diamonds) and with four major ports on its thousands of miles of southern African Atlantic coastline, the battered country of Angola nevertheless remains steeped in poverty, disease and social disarray, lacking infrastructure and littered with millions of unexploded landmines. Its distressed and dangerous state is a legacy of more than a quarter of a century of bloody civil war, which followed independence from Portugal in 1975. The country is now ostensibly at peace, but conflict still rages in the Cabinda enclave to the north and signs of recovery from years of strife are slow to emerge. Hopes can be pinned, however, on the fact that Angola is Africa's second largest oil exporter, after Nigeria, and production is set to double during the next five years. Oil will no doubt bring development. Meanwhile all non-essential travel to Angola is ill advised, especially beyond the crime-ridden capital, Luanda. The city itself maintains a few hotels and restaurants, which struggle to provide reasonable facilities for business travellers in the face of food shortages and limited basic services.

"Little Latin America" is one way of describing Angola. Angolans are known for their love of music and dance, which is evident in their everyday lives. They’ve been forced to live a life of fear because of a brutal civil war that has now been fought for over 20 years. Luanda, the capital, was built to occupy about 30,000 people, but because of the civil war it is home to over 1.5 million making it very crowded and congested. Although colonised by the Portuguese, Angola did not benefit from its rulers. The white settlers were from the poorer and uneducated section of Portugal and did not help in the development of the nation.