Huambo

關於Huambo

Huambo, formerly Nova Lisboa (English: New Lisbon), is the third-most populous city in Angola, after the capital city Luanda and Lubango, with a population of 710,000 (2024) in the city and a population of 836,293 in the municipality of Huambo (Census 2024). The city is the capital of the province of Huambo and is located about 220 km E from Benguela and 600 km SE from Luanda. Huambo is a main hub on the Caminho de Ferro de Benguela (CFB) (the Benguela Railway), which runs from the port of Lobito to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's southernmost province, Katanga. Huambo is served by the Albano Machado Airport (formerly Nova Lisboa Airport).

Huambo receives its name from Wambu, one of the 14 old Ovimbundu kingdoms of the central Angolan plateau. The Ovimbundu, an ethnic group that originally arrived from Eastern Africa, had founded their central kingdom of Bailundu as early as the 15th century. Wambu was one of the smaller kingdoms and was hierarchically under the king of Bailundu, though it enjoyed a considerable degree of independence.

Whereas Bailundo is mentioned in some 18th and 19th-century chronicles in connection to a trading route linking...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.