Fishing in Angola is mainly performed by foreign fleets. Some of the foreign fishing fleets operating in Angolan waters were required by the government to land a portion of their catch at Angolan ports to increase the local supply of fish. Fishing agreements of this kind were reached with several countries, including with Spain, Japan, and Italy.

Fishing in Angola was a major and growing industry before independence from Portugal in 1975. In the early 1970s, there were about 700 fishing boats, and the annual catch was more than 300,000 tons. Including the catch of foreign fishing fleets in Portuguese Angola's waters, the combined annual catch was estimated at over 1 million tons. Moçâmedes together with Luanda, Benguela and Lobito were the major fishing ports. Following independence and into the late 1980s, however, Angola's fishing industry had fallen into disarray, the result of the flight of the local white ethnic Portuguese professional fishermen and fishing industry entrepreneurs. After the April 1974 military coup in Lisbon, as the Portuguese Overseas Province of Angola's political situation deteriorated and the independence of the territory seemed inevitable, many fishing boats departed to Portugal with entire crews and their families. By 1986 only 70 of the 143 fishing boats in Namibe (former Moçâmedes, Portuguese Angola), the port that normally handled two-thirds of the Angolan catch before independence, were operable. Furthermore, most of the fish-processing factories were in need of repair. Once an exporter of fish meal, by 1986 Angola had insufficient supplies for its own market.

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República de Angola, pronounced: [ʁɨˈpublikɐ dɨ ɐ̃ˈɡɔla];Kikongo, Kimbundu, Umbundu: Repubilika ya Ngola), is a country in southern Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city. The exclave province of Cabinda has borders with the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Portuguese were present in some—mostly coastal—points of the territory of what is now Angola, from the 16th to the 19th century, interacting in diverse ways with the peoples that lived there. In the 19th century they slowly and hesitantly began to establish themselves in the interior. Angola as a Portuguese colony encompassing the present territory was not established before the end of the 19th century, and "effective occupation", as required by the Berlin Conference (1884) was achieved only by the 1920s. Independence was achieved in 1975, after a protracted liberation war. After independence, Angola was the scene of an intense civil war from 1975 to 2002. The country has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy has on average grown at a two-digit pace since the 1990s, especially since the end of the civil war. In spite of this, standards of living remain low for the majority of the population, and life expectancy and infant mortality rates in Angola are among the worst-ranked in the world. At the same time, a minority has reached comfortable life standards, and the dominant stratum has succeeded in accumulating considerable wealth, so that social inequality in Angola is one of the highest in the world.