Angola is a country in southwestern Africa. Its name derives from the Kimbundu word for king, 'N'gola'. It was first settled by Bushmen hunter-gatherer societies before the northern domains came under the rule of Bantu states such as Kongo and Ndongo. From the 15th century Portuguese colonists began trading and a settlement was established at Luanda in the 16th century. Portugal annexed territories in the region which were ruled as a colony from 1655, and Angola was incorporated as an overseas province of Portugal in 1951. After the Angolan War of Independence (1961–1974) which ended with an army mutiny and leftist coup in Lisbon, Angola's independence from Portugal was achieved on November 11, 1975 through the Alvor Agreement.

The area of current day Angola was inhabited during the paleolithic and neolithic eras, as attested by remains found in Luanda, Congo and the Namibe desert, eventually, at the beginning of recorded history other cultures and people also arrived.

The first ones to settle were the Bushmen, great hunters, similar to Pygmies in stature. This changed at the beginning of the sixth century AD, when the Bantu, already in possession of metal-working technology, ceramics and agriculture began one of the greatest migrations in history. They came from the north, probably originating from somewhere near the present day Republic of Cameroon. When they reached what is now Angola they encountered the Bushmen and other groups. The establishment of the Bantu took many centuries and gave rise to various groupings that took on different ethnic characteristics. The first large political entity in the area, known to history as the Kingdom of Kongo, appeared in the thirteenth century and stretched from Gabon in the north to the river Kwanza in the south, and from the Atlantic in the west to the river Cuango in the east.

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.

The Angolan Civil War was a major civil conflict in the Southern African state of Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with some interludes, until 2002. The war began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. Prior to this, a decolonisation conflict had taken place in 1974–75, following the Angolan War of Independence. The Civil War was primarily a struggle for power between two former liberation movements, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). At the same time, it served as a surrogate battleground for the Cold War, due to heavy intervention by major opposing powers such as the Soviet Union and the United States.

Each organisation had different roots in the Angolan social fabric and mutually incompatible leaderships, despite their sharing the aim of ending colonial occupation. Although both the MPLA and UNITA had socialist leanings, for the purpose of mobilising international support they posed as "Marxist-Leninist" and "anti-communist", respectively. A third movement, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), having fought the MPLA alongside UNITA during the war for independence and the decolonization conflict, played almost no role in the Civil War. Additionally, the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), an association of separatist militant groups, fought for the independence of the province of Cabinda from Angola.

In November 1975, on the eve of Angola's independence, Cuba launched a large-scale military intervention in support of the leftist liberation movement MPLA against United States-backed invasions by South Africa and Zaire in support of two other liberation movements competing for power in the country, FNLA and UNITA. By the end of 1975 the Cuban military in Angola numbered more than 25,000 troops. Following the retreat of Zaire and South Africa, Cuban forces remained in Angola to support the Angolan government against the UNITA insurgency in the continuing Angolan Civil War.

In 1988, Cuban troops intervened a second time to avert military disaster in a Soviet-led FAPLA offensive against UNITA, which was supported by South Africa, leading to the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the opening of a second front. This turn of events is considered to have been the major impetus to the success of the ongoing peace talks leading to the New York Accords, the agreement by which Cuban and South African forces withdrew from Angola while South West Africa gained its independence from South Africa. Cuban military engagement in Angola ended in 1991, while the Angolan civil war continued until 2002 (and fighting is still ongoing in the exclave of Cabinda).