[4] Under Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, cities, towns and villages were founded, railroads were opened, ports built, and a Westernized society was being gradually developed.
[6] The MPLA leader Agostinho Neto declared himself president of the country with the backing of Cuba and founded a Marxist–Leninist inspired regime.
[7] Cuba also pulled out of the civil war leaving the MPLA and Unita to fight each other without the support of world powers.
[8] The vast amount of diamonds and oil to be mined could have funded the civil war for another 27 years, but UNITA leader Savimbi was killed by MPLA soldiers in 2002.
Accordingly, a state diamond-mining enterprise, the National Diamond Company (Emprêsa Nacional de Diamantes--Endiama), was founded in 1981 and acquired the government's 77 percent share in Diamand.
The two foreign companies involved in servicing and operating the industry pulled out of Angola by 1986 and mid-1986 Diamang was formally dissolved, leaving large outstanding debts.
After the subsequent kidnapping of a British expatriate in November 1986, defense forces in the area were strengthened, allowing the resumption of mining operations.
Furthermore, Endiama, which oversees the industry and holds monthly sales, has benefited from overall improvement in the world diamond market as well as dealers' willingness to pay higher prices in the hope of securing favored treatment in the future.
The precise terms of the contract were not made public, but it was thought that the company would undertake new prospecting, which had been at a virtual standstill since independence.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Soviet Union was to participate in mining enterprises and was to draw up a detailed geological map of Angola.
[10] In 1987 the government also began to revise the 1979 mining law to encourage new companies to invest in the diamond-mining industry, and to resume prospecting in particular.
Aside from removing of massive amounts of land for mining purposed, the practice also leaches the soil of nutrients when diamond extraction takes place.
Many environmental policies have been enacted over the past two decades due to the threat that mining poses to ecosystems and biodiversity in many regions in the world.
The Congolean forest that is being endangered due to poor mining practices[16] Agenda 21: 1992 Earth Summit asked transnational companies to reduce environmental damage and developed countries to begin sustainable consumption.
[17] The growth that has occurred is due to the civil war finally being over, which has allowed American companies to come here to the country to set up oil drills and open new diamond mines.
[6] To provide sustainable jobs and income for the millions of displaced Angolan people will involve developing agriculture and industry that does not rely on non-renewable resources.
[5] Angola has large rivers and delta regions, which potentially could be dammed to create electricity for export to neighboring countries.
[5] Once a major export, iron ore was no longer being mined in Angola by the late 1980s, because of attendant security and transportation problems.
Most of the iron ore was shipped to Japan, West Germany, and Britain; it earned almost US$50 million a year in export revenue.
Production began to slow in 1974 as a result of technical problems at the Cassinga mine and stopped completely in August 1975.
However, the railroad to the port of Moçâmedes (then called Namibe) needed extensive repair, and since it was located only 310 kilometers north of the Namibian border, security against South African attacks could not be ensured.
Even supposing these problems could be resolved, production of iron ore at Cassinga would be costly in view of the depressed state of the world steel market in the late 1980s.
These include manganese, copper, gold, phosphates, granite, marble, uranium, quartz, lead, zinc, wolfram, tin, fluorite, sulfur, feldspar, kaolin, mica, asphalt, gypsum, and talc.
Quartz production, however, was suspended indefinitely because of the military situation in areas near the extraction sites in Cuanza Sul Province.