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Africa
Angola
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Angola, officially
the Republic of Angola Kongo, is a country in south-central Africa
bordering Namibia to
the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo
to the north, and Zambia
to the east, and with a west coast along the Atlantic Ocean. The
exclave province Cabinda has a border with the Republic of the
Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Angola was a Portuguese
colony from the 16th century to 1975. The country is the second-largest
petroleum and diamond producer in sub-Saharan Africa, yet its
people are among the continent's poorest. According to the International
Monetary Fund, more than $4 billion in oil receipts have disappeared
from Angola's treasury in the 2000s. In August 2006, a peace deal
was signed with a faction of the FLEC, a separatist guerrilla
from the Cabinda exclave in the North, which is still active.
About 65% of Angola's oil comes from that region.
Khoisan hunter-gatherers are some of the earliest known modern
human inhabitants of the area. They were largely replaced by Bantu
tribes during Bantu migrations, though small numbers of Khoisan
remain in parts of southern Angola
to the present day. The Bantu came from the north, probably from
somewhere near the present-day Republic of Cameroon.
When they reached what is now Angola they encountered the Khoisan,
Bushmen and other groups considerably less advanced than themselves,
who they easily dominated with their superior knowledge of metal-working,
ceramic and agriculture. The establishment of the Bantu took many
centuries and gave rise to various groupings who took on different
ethnic characteristics.
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