Publication

This paper discusses Angola’s foreign policy as a response to internal dynamics and its use as an important survival tool for the government since coming to power. In the years since independence, Angola has pragmatically recalibrated its foreign relations and sought key global backers to survive the traumatic first decades as an independent country and to develop a viable post-colonial, post-conflict state. With the USSR defunct, China has become Angola’s main external backer in its current stage of reconstruction and growth. As this stage evolves into a higher democratic development, Angola can be expected to seek an ever-closer relationship with the US.