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Cabinda
Angola's oil-rich Atlantic exclave, separated from the rest of the country by a strip of Congolese coast
Cabinda is the part of Angola that sits north of the Congo River, cut off from the rest of the country by a narrow corridor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that reaches the Atlantic. Small and forested on land, it is enormous offshore: the oil fields off its coast have produced a large share of Angola's crude since the 1960s and underpin much of the national budget. Cabinda also carries one of Africa's longest-running separatist claims. Some Cabindan groups argue that a separate colonial treaty with Portugal gives the territory a right to its own state, while Angola regards it as an integral province. The result is a place where geography, oil, and identity overlap.
Cabinda Province covers about 7,300 square kilometers on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa. The Republic of the Congo borders it to the north, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo wraps around its east and south, where a strip of Congolese territory about 60 kilometers wide, around the town of Muanda and the mouth of the Congo River, separates it from mainland Angola. Inland lies the Mayombe forest, one of the wettest and most biodiverse rainforests in the region. The 2024 census counted about 903,000 people, most in and around the capital, Cabinda city. Offshore, the long-running Block 0 concession, operated by a Chevron subsidiary with Angola's state oil company Sonangol as a partner, accounts for much of the province's wealth. Travel to the rest of Angola is mostly by air or sea.
Portugal claimed the coast from the 1400s, and in 1885 local rulers signed the Treaty of Simulambuco, which made Cabinda a Portuguese protectorate separate from Angola. Weeks later the Berlin Conference gave the Congo River mouth to King Leopold's Congo, creating the gap that divides Cabinda from Angola today. Portugal administered Cabinda as part of Angola from the 1950s onward. The Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), formed in 1963, rejected the 1975 Alvor Agreement that set the terms of Angola's independence and took up arms. A 2006 peace memorandum signed with one faction ended most fighting, but other FLEC factions continue to claim independence and occasional armed incidents are still reported. Angola's government considers Cabinda an inseparable part of the country.