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Introduction:

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 C ThePortuguese 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 19thcentury, 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 1990, especiallysince 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.



Etymology:The name "Angola" comes from the Portuguese colonial name de Angola, appearing as early as Dias de Novais's 1571 charter. The toponym was derived by the Portuguese from the title Angola held by the kings of  Ndongo. Ndongo was a kingdom in the highlands between the Kwanza and Lukala Rivers nominally tributary to the king of Kongo but which was seeking greater independence during the 16thcentury.


History:


Early migrations and political units

Khoisan hunter-gatherers are the earliest known modern human inhabitants of the area. They were largely absorbed and/or replaced by Bantu peoples during the Bantu migrations, though small numbers remain in parts of southern Angola to the present day. The Bantu came from the north, probably from somewhere near thepresent-day Republic of Cameroon. When they reached what is now Angola, they encountered the Khoisan, Bushmen and other groups considerably less technologically advanced than themselves, whom they easily dominated with their superior knowledge of metalworking, ceramics and agriculture. The establishment of the Bantu took many centuries and gave rise to various groups who took on different ethnic characteristics.During this period, the Bantu established a number of political units in most parts of what today is Angola. The best known of these is the Kingdom of the Kongo that had its centre in the northwest of contemporary Angola, but included important regions in the west of present day Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of Congo as well as in southern Gabon. It established traderoutes with other trading cities and civilizations up and down the coast of southwestern and West Africa and even with the Great Zimbabwe Mutapa Empire, but engaged in little or no transoceanic trade.





Portuguese presence on the coast:



The geographical areas now designated as Angola entered into contact with the Portuguese in the late 15th century, concretely in 1483, whenPortugal established relations with the Kongo State, which stretched from modern Gabon in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. In this context, they established a small trade post at the port of Mpinda, in Soyo. The Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1575 as "São Paulo de Loanda", with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Benguela, a Portuguese...