Angola is situated on the Atlantic coast, with Namibia on its southern border, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, and Zambia on its eastern border.
Although Portuguese is the official language of Angola, the languages Umbundu, Kimbundu, and Kikongo, are widely spoken.
After the conflict that ended in Independence for Angola in 1975, civil war raged in the country until 2002. The people are plagued by old minefields that still claim victims, and normal democratic processes are not yet fully established, but the country is stabilizing.
The country’s economy is in the process of a turn around, and the potential for wealth is there. Diamonds and oil are its richest resources. This presently benefits mainly political, administrative, economic, and military power holders at this stage, but a ‘middle class’ is emerging in the urban areas, where only 19% are classed as ‘poor’. In the rural areas the figure rises to about 58%.
For this reason, as in many other countries of the world, large portions of the rural population is tending to settle around the cities and towns and are moving away from subsistence agriculture towards an urban way of life.
This new and more affluent life in the towns and cities means that people are seeking more and more to equip themselves and their homes with such items as clothing, bags, folders, wallets, bottles, glasses, and their new small businesses with stationery, pens, basic electronic goods, promotional items, corporate gifts, and corporate clothing.
Namibia is a land of deserts. The Namib Desert consists of gravel plains and sand. The strong winds keep the sand on the move and create the largest sand dunes in the world.
Along the whole Atlantic seaboard is a coastal desert, called the Skeleton Coast.
To the South it shares the Kalahari Desert with South Africa and Botswana. Although this, too, has extremely desolate areas, other parts, although arid, have a small, regular rainfall. This creates a habitat for hundreds of kinds of succulents and other hardy plants, as well as a surprising number of animals.
The Namibian official language is English, but Oshiwambo and German are also commonly used. The most widely understood language in the country is Afrikaans.
However the unemployment figures are still troubling and are currently estimated as high as 50%. The majority of Namibians live a rural subsistence farming lifestyle, and are considered very poor.
About 4000 commercial farms, on about half the arable land of Namibia are producing all the agricultural products of Namibia, but this is not enough, and food still has to be imported.
One of the fastest growing economic sectors in the country is the development of wildlife conservation areas and tourism. These are particularly beneficial to the formerly unemployed rural Namibian people.
The urban Namibians, who have a far higher per capita income, benefit from mining, agriculture, manufacturing and tourism.
These are the primary earners in Namibia. The country has a well developed infrastructure and is technologically advanced, due to its previous links with South Africa’s economy.
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