Since 2002, when the 27-year civil war ended, government policy prioritized the repair and improvement of infrastructure and strengthening of political and social institutions.

During the first decade of the 21st century, Angola's economy was one of the fastest-growing in the world,[18] with reported annual average GDP growth of 11.1 percent from 2001 to 2010.

[24][25] The Angolan economy has been dominated by the production of raw materials and the use of cheap labor since European rule began in the sixteenth century.

[26] After the Portuguese Empire abolished the slave trade in Angola in 1858, it began using concessional agreements, granting exclusive rights to a private company to exploit land, people, and all other resources within a given territory.

[26] At the same time, Portuguese began emigrating to Angola to establish farms and plantations (fazendas) to grow cash crops for export.

[30] Before World War II, the Portuguese government was concerned primarily with keeping its colonies self-sufficient and therefore invested little capital in Angola's local economy.

[26] In the rural areas, Portuguese settlers often found it difficult to make a living because of fluctuating world prices for sugarcane and sisal and the difficulties in obtaining cheap labor to farm their crops.

[26] When the price of Angola's principal crops—coffee and sisal—jumped after the war, the Portuguese government began to reinvest some profits inside the country, initiating a series of projects to develop infrastructure.

[26] In addition, Portuguese citizens were encouraged to emigrate to Angola, where planned settlements (colonatos) were established for them in the rural areas.

[26] Finally, the Portuguese initiated mining operations for iron ore, manganese, and copper to complement industrial activities at home, and in 1955 the first successful oil wells were drilled in Angola.

[26] By 1960 the Angolan economy had been completely transformed, boasting a successful commercial agricultural sector, a promising mineral and petroleum production enterprise, and an incipient manufacturing industry.

[26] Furthermore, only 8,000 vehicles remained out of 153,000 registered, dozens of bridges had been destroyed, the trading network was disrupted, administrative services did not exist, and files and studies were missing.

[26] During their stay, however, these settlers had appropriated Angolan lands, disrupting local peasant production of cash and subsistence crops.

[26] Most important, the Portuguese had not trained Angolans to operate the larger industrial or agricultural enterprises, nor had they actively educated the population.

[26] It established state farms to continue producing coffee, sugar, and sisal, and it took over the operations of all factories to maintain production.

[26] These attempts usually failed, primarily because of the lack of experienced managers and the continuing disruptions in rural areas caused by the UNITA insurgency.

[26] United Nations Angola Verification Mission III and MONUA spent US$1.5 billion overseeing implementation of the Lusaka Protocol, a 1994 peace accord that ultimately failed to end the civil war.

The protocol prohibited UNITA from buying foreign arms, a provision the United Nations largely did not enforce, so both sides continued to build up their stockpile.

UNITA purchased weapons in 1996 and 1997 from private sources in Albania and Bulgaria, and from Zaire, South Africa, Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Togo, and Burkina Faso.

[18] The security brought about by the 2002 peace settlement has led to the resettlement of 4 million displaced persons, thus resulting in large-scale increases in agriculture production.

For example, Kilamba Kiaxi, where a whole new satellite town of Luanda, consisting of housing facilities for several hundreds of thousands of people, was completely uninhabited for over four years because of skyrocketing prices, but completely sold out after the government decreased the original price and created mortgage plans at around the election time and thus made it affordable for middle-class people.

With revenues booming from oil exports, the government has started to implement ambitious development programs to build roads and other basic infrastructure for the nation.

Severe wartime conditions, including extensive planting of landmines throughout the countryside, have brought agricultural activities to a near-standstill.

Other rich resources await development: gold, forest products, fisheries, iron ore, coffee, and fruits.

[37] This is a chart of trend of nominal gross domestic product of Angola at market prices using International Monetary Fund data;[38] figures are in millions of units.

Chevron Corporation, TotalEnergies., ExxonMobil, Eni, and BP all operate in the country and represent a vast majority of daily production.

The French major is currently executing several subsea tieback projects there, including CLOV 3 and Begonia, whose final investment decisions (FIDs) were taken in 2022.