Angola is located on the western Atlantic Coast of Central Africa between Namibia and the Republic of the Congo. It also is bordered by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to the east.

On 10th November 1975 Portugal announced the independence of her former ‘Overseas Territory’, creating Angola. Civil war was immediate. The rival factions comprised Mr Dos Santos’s left-wing MPLA and Jonas Savimbi’s Unita movement, which was backed for 15 years by the US and the South African apartheid regime.

Simon Taylor of Global Witness, a British NGO (non-government organisation), studied human rights abuses in Angola in depth.

Angola derives most (90%) of its wealth from crude oil production.