Travel in Angola: a country that opened to tourists in 2023

Who can enter Angola without a visa

Presidential Decree 189/23, dated 29 September 2023, exempts tourists from 98 countries from the need for a visa. The exemption covers stays of up to 30 days per entry and 90 days a year, and it applies only to people coming for tourism. The list includes 35 European countries, among them every member of the European Union, as well as Russia, Norway and Turkey; 14 African countries, from Cape Verde, Morocco and Botswana to Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea; 11 in Asia, including China, Japan, India and the Gulf states; the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico in the Americas; Australia and New Zealand; and a number of small island states. South Africans have needed no visa since an agreement signed in December 2017.

Travellers under the exemption still pass through the formalities at the border and show a passport valid for longer than the planned stay, and an international vaccination certificate where one is required. For nationals of countries not on the list, the same decree told consulates to issue tourist visas through a simplified procedure within three working days, on presentation of a passport valid for more than six months, a return ticket and, where applicable, the vaccination certificate. UN Tourism also lists Angola's participation in the KAZA UniVisa, the shared visa of the Kavango-Zambezi countries.

How the numbers have grown since the war

Tourism is recent in Angola. The civil war kept most of the country closed until 2002, and Britannica records that about 40,000 tourists entered each year in the late 1990s. Numbers rose sharply once the war ended. UN Tourism reported 223,140 international arrivals in 2025, an increase of 28% on the year before and well above the level before the pandemic.

The government presents tourism as a way to spread economic activity across the provinces and to reduce the country's dependence on oil. UN Tourism records plans for ten tourism development hubs, a state fund of €449 million backing infrastructure for the Cabo Ledo hub on the coast south of Luanda, the privatisation of nearly 3,000 hotel rooms and a training programme, Capacita Turismo, aiming at 10,000 trained workers. It projected foreign direct investment in tourism of US$3 billion for 2025.

When the seasons suit a visit

Angola's calendar is set by rain, and the rain arrives earlier and stays longer in the north. Britannica gives a rainy season from September to May in the north and from December to March in the south. The dry season, the cacimbo, runs through the middle of the year and often brings heavy morning mist to the coast; July and August are the coolest months, with frost possible on the high plateau.

The differences between regions are wide. Luanda gets about 330 millimetres of rain a year, the far southern coast as little as 50, and Huambo on the Bié Plateau about 1,450. Soyo at the mouth of the Congo averages about 26 °C over the year, Huambo about 19 °C. Locally heavy rain causes periodic flooding on the plateau. Temperatures fall with altitude and with distance from the equator, so the road from the coast up to the plateau towns climbs into cooler air, and the far south is both drier and cooler than the north. The details of the climate are in Angola's geography.

How to get around a country this size

Angola covers 1,246,700 square kilometres, and distances are long. Its road network runs to 76,626 kilometres, of which 19,156 are paved. The war left much of it broken, and Wikipedia's account notes that travel on highways outside the towns is often not advised without a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and that drivers must watch for landmine warning markers at the roadside where tracks leave the surface. The government has contracted the restoration of many roads; the road from Lubango down to Namibe was rebuilt with European Union funding. Two trans-African routes cross the country, the Tripoli to Cape Town highway and the Beira to Lobito highway. Traffic drives on the right.

There are three separate railway systems, 2,761 kilometres in all. The Luanda line runs east to Malanje, the Benguela Railway from Lobito climbs to Huambo and crosses the plateau to the Congolese border, and the Namibe line runs inland from the southern port. All three were repaired after the war, the Benguela line by Chinese contractors between 2006 and 2014, with 67 stations and trains running at up to 90 kilometres an hour.

The air network was the only safe way to travel during the civil war, and the airfields the Portuguese left were used intensively. The national airline, TAAG, flies to Africa, Europe, South America and the Caribbean. The Dr António Agostinho Neto International Airport outside Luanda, built to replace the old Quatro de Fevereiro airport, has capacity for 15 million passengers a year, and the airport at Kalandula is planned for international certification.

What lies along the coast south of Luanda

Quiçama National Park lies just south of the capital, in Luanda province, and Britannica's photographs show savanna with baobabs and elephants drinking at its waterholes. The Cuanza reaches the sea about 65 kilometres south of Luanda.

Benguela and Lobito, traditional rivals, stand close together on the central coast: Benguela the old town, fortified in 1587, and Lobito the port whose deep bay lets large ships unload close inshore and where the Benguela Railway begins. Further south lies Namibe, the old Moçâmedes, the port and fishing town of the south, and then the desert. South of Benguela the coast is the northern end of the Namib, with dunes in the far south and the plant known as the tumboa, Welwitschia mirabilis, whose two leaves lie on the sand for about three metres.

Iona National Park, about 200 kilometres from Moçâmedes, covers 15,200 square kilometres. It was proclaimed a reserve in 1937 and a national park in 1964. Before the war it was rich in large game, and poaching and the destruction of its infrastructure have cost it much of that; it is known now for its flora and its rock formations.

Where the plateau roads lead

The road inland from Namibe climbs the escarpment to Lubango on the Huíla plateau, where the Humpata highland rises to 2,500 metres and more. Lubango was Sá da Bandeira under Portuguese rule, and it and the southern ports had European majorities by 1970. On the Bié Plateau to the north-east, Huambo sits at the heart of Ovimbundu country, near Mount Moco at about 2,620 metres. The plateau holds about half the country's rural population, and the landscape is farmed highland with villages.

Beyond the plateau the land falls away eastwards into the sandy tableland of the east, where Cameia National Park lies in Moxico at about 1,100 metres, on plains that flood each season and drain towards the Zambezi. Two lakes, Cameia and Dilolo, lie just outside its boundaries with reedbeds and swamps rich in water birds. Britannica describes much of the east as almost empty, and in the 2024 census Cuando counted 138,770 people and Moxico Leste 411,074.

What the north keeps

East of Luanda the road and railway lead to Malanje, whose province holds Cangandala National Park, created in 1963. UN Tourism names the Kalandula waterfalls among the country's natural assets, and the airport at Kalandula is to be certified for international flights.

In the far north, Mbanza Kongo stands on a plateau at 570 metres. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Kongo, and UNESCO inscribed its vestiges on the World Heritage List in 2017: the royal space, the customary court and the holy tree, royal burial places and the stone churches the Portuguese added, among them the former cathedral, Kulumbimbi. The Kongo Kingdom Museum in the town holds objects from the old kingdom. The Europeans imposed a grid of streets on the town, and the main street still follows its older line. UNESCO's evaluation noted that a tourism management strategy for the site still had to be developed.

Further north again, across a strip of Congolese territory about 60 kilometres wide, lies Cabinda. Most of the exclave is tropical forest. The Maiombe forest in its north receives about 1,800 millimetres of rain a year and it shelters gorillas and chimpanzees; the province also grows coffee and cocoa. Soyo, at the mouth of the Congo on the Angolan side, was the site of the main early Portuguese trading post, and it has grown again with the oil industry.

What a visitor finds in Luanda

International flights land at Luanda. Paulo Dias de Novais founded it in 1575 as São Paulo de Loanda, and it became a city in 1605. It grew from 61,208 people in 1940 to 475,328 in 1970, and war pushed it past two million by the mid-1990s; Luanda province counted 8,665,510 people at the 2024 census. Britannica describes the capital as a port city that blends Portuguese colonial landmarks with African housing styles and modern industrial complexes, and the musseques, the informal districts that filled with refugees during the war, surround the centre.

The city's history is on show in a few places. The National Historical Archive holds documents from the seventeenth century onwards, the National Institute for Cultural Heritage works from the capital, and Africanews names the National Museum of Slavery among the country's best-known attractions. The Futungo market near Luanda is where craftsmen sell carvings and other handicrafts, and the city keeps an annual Carnival. Semba, the partner dance from which kizomba and kuduro grew, developed on this stretch of coast.

Food follows the coast. Palm oil goes into many dishes and a number of them are built on seafood, and Wikipedia's account of the Bakongo names the Ashiluanda of Luanda Island, with the Solongo of the northern coast, as the country's only African sea fishermen. The city's history, from 1575 onwards, is in Angola's history, and its people and languages in Angola's culture.

What visitors need to know before they go

The currency is the kwanza, which averaged 912 to the US dollar in 2025 by the IMF's count; the practical details in the record beside this article give the plugs, the voltage and the calling code. Portuguese is the language of government and education, and English is spoken mainly in the south and east by people who have worked in Namibia and Zambia.

Health requires planning. Malaria is common in parts of the country, and cholera outbreaks recur where sanitation is poor. A yellow fever outbreak began in Luanda in December 2015 and spread to at least 16 of the 18 provinces of the time before it subsided in August 2016, and the visa decree requires an international vaccination certificate where applicable.

Landmines remain the particular hazard of travel off the main roads. About 15 million were laid by 2002, by Wikipedia's account, and demining has gone on since 1994. Wikipedia's account advises attention to the presence or absence of warning markers by the roadside. Government travel advisories change often, and this catalogue gives no verdict on safety.