Cunene_Province
Cunene Province
Province of Angola
Cunene is a province of Angola. It has an area of 87,342 km2 and a population of 990,087 in 2014.[1]
Ondjiva is the capital of the province; it was previously known as Vila Pereira d’Eça. Ondjiva is the only city in this province with the distance from Ondjiva to Luanda is 1424 km and to Lubango is 415 km. The Cunene River gave its name to the province.
Cunene lies north of the Cunene River, which forms the border between Angola and Namibia. Cunene is traversed by the northwesterly line of equal latitude and longitude.
During World War I the region was the scene of fighting in 1914–15. The German campaign in Angola resulted in Germany's temporary occupation of the area.
The inhabitants of the Province are overwhelmingly Ovambo pastoralists. Since the 1960s, they have been under pressure first from white settlers, and after independence from high-ranking military officers and politicians, who acquired large extensions of land which the Ovambo need for the transhumance of their cattle. The ecological, economic and social advantage of pastoralism over ranching has been known since the 1970s, but has not been sufficiently taken into account in policy making.[3]