Huambo

Huambo is the capital of Huambo Province in Angola. It was established by the Portuguese in 1912. It was a thriving city in the colonial period, named Nova Lisboa (New Lisbon), between 1928 and 1975. After independence Huambo was a food processing and a railroad equipment repair station. Huambo was located on the central Angolan railway which runs from the port of Benguela to the Congo border.

It had a population of 203,800 in 1983, but became the site of a brutal battle during the bloody civil war between the Marxist-backed government and UNITA in the early 1990s. The city was besieged, extensively damaged, and its civilians were massacred en-masse or fled to neighbouring Zambia.

A returnee camp at Huambo town opened in 2004, and has so far welcomed around 13,000 people. The removal of dangerous explosive mines continues in many areas. Food-for-work programmes are rebuilding schools.