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Luanda

Capital and largest city of Angola

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Among the oldest colonial cities of Africa, Luanda was founded in January 1576 as São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda by Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais, being occasionally called "Leonda" or "St Paul de Leonda" by non-Portuguese sources. The city served as the centre of the slave trade to Brazil before the institution was prohibited.

At the start of the Angolan Civil War in 1975, most of the white Portuguese left as refugees, principally migrating to Portugal. Luanda's population increased greatly from internal refugees fleeing the war, but its infrastructure was inadequate to handle the increase. This also caused the exacerbation of slums, or musseques, around Luanda.

In the 21st century, the city has been undergoing a major reconstruction. Many new large developments are taking place that will alter its cityscape significantly.

Industries present in the city include the processing of agricultural products, beverage production, textile, cement, new car assembly plants, construction materials, plastics, metallurgy, cigarettes and shoes. The city is also notable as an economic centre for oil, and a refinery is located in the city.

Luanda has been ranked as one of the most expensive cities in the world for expatriates. The inhabitants of Luanda are mostly members of the ethnic Ambundu people. In recent decades of the 21st century, the number of ethnic Bakongo and Ovimbundu have also increased. Ethnic Europeans are mainly Portuguese.

Luanda was the main host city for the matches of the 2010 African Cup of Nations.

History

Portuguese colonization

Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda on 25 January 1576 as "São Paulo da Assumpção de Loanda". He had brought one hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Most of the Portuguese community lived within the fort. Several sources from as early as the 17th century called the city "St. Paul de Leonda".

In 1618, the Portuguese built the fortress called Fortaleza São Pedro da Barra, and they subsequently built two more: Fortaleza de São Miguel (1634) and Forte de São Francisco do Penedo (1765–66). Of these, the Fortaleza de São Miguel is the best preserved.

Luanda was Portugal's bridgehead from 1627, except during the Dutch rule of Luanda, from 1640 to 1648, as Fort Aardenburgh. The city served as the centre of slave trade to Brazil from c. 1550 to 1836. The slave trade was conducted mostly with the Portuguese colony of Brazil; Brazilian ships were the most numerous in the port of Luanda. This slave trade also involved local merchants and warriors who profited from the trade. During this period, no large scale territorial conquest was intended by the Portuguese; only a few minor settlements were established in the immediate hinterland of Luanda, some on the last stretch of the Kwanza River.

In the 17th century, the Imbangala became the main rivals of the Mbundu in supplying slaves to the Luanda market. In the 1751, between 5,000 and 10,000 slaves were annually sold. By this time, Angola, a Portuguese colony, was in fact like a colony of Brazil, paradoxically another Portuguese colony. A strong degree of Brazilian influence was noted in Luanda until the independence of Brazil in 1822.

In the 19th century, still under Portuguese rule, Luanda experienced a major economic revolution. The slave trade was abolished in 1836, and in 1844, Angola's ports were opened to foreign shipping. By 1850, Luanda was one of the greatest and most developed Portuguese cities in the vast Portuguese Empire outside continental Portugal, full of trading companies, exporting (together with Benguela) palm and peanut oil, wax, copal, timber, ivory, cotton, coffee, and cocoa, among many other products. Maize, tobacco, dried meat, and cassava flour are also produced locally. The Angolan bourgeoisie was born by this time.

In 1889, Governor Brito Capelo opened the gates of an aqueduct which supplied the city with water, a formerly scarce resource, laying the foundation for major growth.

Estado Novo

Throughout Portugal's dictatorship, known as the Estado Novo, Luanda grew from a town of 61,208 with 14.6% of those inhabitants being white in 1940, to a wealthy cosmopolitan major city of 475,328 in 1970 with 124,814 Europeans (26.3%) and around 50,000 mixed race inhabitants (10.5%).

Like most of Portuguese Angola, the cosmopolitan city of Luanda was not affected by the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974); economic growth and development in the entire region reached record highs during this period. In 1982, a report called Luanda the "Paris of Africa".

Independence

By the time of Angolan independence in 1975, Luanda was a modern city with the majority of its population being African, but also dominated by a strong minority of white Portuguese origin.

After the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 1974, with the advent of independence and the start of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), most of the white Portuguese Luandans left as refugees, principally for Portugal; however, many travelled over land to South Africa.

The large numbers of skilled technicians among the force of Cuban soldiers sent in to support the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government in the Angolan Civil War were able to make a valuable contribution to restoring and maintaining basic services in the city.

In the following years, however, slums called musseques—which had existed for decades—began to grow out of proportion and stretched several kilometres beyond Luanda's former city limits as a result of the decades-long civil war, and because of the rise of deep social inequalities due to large-scale migration of civil war refugees from other Angolan regions. For decades, Luanda's facilities were not adequately expanded to handle this huge increase in the city's population.

21st century

In 2001 the provisional Angolan governments cleared the Boavista slum in Luanda Bay so that a luxury housing redevelopment was possible. By the early 2020s Luanda rose to become one of the world's most expensive cities for ex pats to reside.

Following the Luanda Agreement in 2002, with the end of the Angolan Civil War and high economic growth rates fuelled by the wealth provided by the increasing oil and diamond production, major reconstruction started. Luanda has been of major concern because its population had multiplied and had far outgrown the capacity of the city, especially because much of its infrastructure including water, electricity, and roads had become obsolete and degraded.

Luanda has been undergoing major road reconstruction in the 21st century, and new highways are planned to improve connections to Cacuaco, Viana, Samba, and the new airport. Major social housing is also being constructed to house those who reside in slums, which dominate the landscape of Luanda. A large Chinese firm has been given a contract to construct the majority of replacement housing in Luanda. The Angolan minister of health recently stated poverty in Angola will be overcome by an increase in jobs and the housing of every citizen.

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