🇦🇴 Angola
Luanda
Luanda (population 9 million in the greater metropolitan area) is the capital of Angola and one of the fastest-growing and most expensive cities in Africa — a coastal Atlantic city on a natural bay 8° south of the equator, where Portuguese colonial architecture, Marxist revolutionary monuments, and a spectacular oil-funded construction boom coexist in dramatic tension. Angola was a Portuguese colony from 1575 to 1975 (450 years of colonisation, the longest of any sub-Saharan African country). The independence war (1961–1975) was followed immediately by a 27-year civil war (1975–2002) between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels — one of the longest and most destructive civil wars in African history (500,000+ dead; 4 million displaced). The post-war reconstruction was funded by oil (Angola is the second-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria; the Luanda-Cabinda oil fields produce approximately 1.2 million barrels per day); the oil money produced a Luanda construction boom that made it briefly the most expensive city in the world for expatriates (2013–2016). The Ilha do Cabo (the narrow sandspit peninsula separating the bay from the Atlantic — the original Portuguese settlement site) has the finest beaches and the most spectacular sunset views in Luanda. The Museu Nacional de Antropologia and the Museu Nacional de Escravatura (the Slavery Museum, at the site of the primary slave-trading holding facility) document the 350-year history of the Angolan slave trade. Best months: May–October (the Luanda dry season — cacimbo).