The climate of Bié is cool and abundant rainfall makes it possible to farm maize, sugar cane, rice, coffee and peanuts.

The province was once an important commercial link between the Portuguese traders at the port of Benguela on the Atlantic Ocean and the Ovimbundu in the interior.

[3] Bié province is perhaps best known as the place where the family of Angolan political leader Jonas Savimbi came from.

Savimbi, although born in Moxico Province near Bié, was ethnically Bieno, i.e. of a subgroup of the Ovimbundu.

Savimbi gained global notoriety as a United States ally during the Cold War.