Portuguese colonization , founded in 1576 by
Paulo Dias de Novais, today hosts the
Armed Forces Museum.
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 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 marching in Luanda during the
Portuguese Colonial Wars (1961–74). 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 with President of Brazil
Dilma Rousseff at the Presidential Palace in 2011. 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. ==Geography==