Dundo
| Dundo | |
|---|---|
| Municipality and town | |
 Dundo
|
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| Coordinates: 7°22′S 20°49′E / 7.367°S 20.817°ECoordinates: 7°22′S 20°49′E / 7.367°S 20.817°E | |
| Country |
 Angola
|
| Province | Lunda Norte Province |
| Time zone | WAT (UTC+1) |
| Climate | Aw |
Dundo is a former-mining town, now city and the provincial capital of Lunda Norte in Angola. Established in the early part of the 20th century as a planned diamond mining community, Dundo has continued to grow, has its own airport and is now being superseded by a new city, New Dundo.
The city is the home of the football club called Grupo Desportivo Sagrada Esperança, which plays at Estádio Quintalão. The local museum houses objects collected by social anthropologist, Hermann Baumann.
The settlement of Dundo was founded in 1912 after the discovery of diamonds in the Cuango River valley, located in the north-eastern border of Angola where it today adjoins the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Formed as a planned community to support the burgeoning mining operations, Dundo grew after the private investor company, Diamang (formed in 1917) were given the diamond mining concession in the entire region of Lunda, basing their headquarters in the town. Diamang was created under the auspices of Portugal, Angloa's then colonial master, with further investment from other European nations. The region was mainly stable under colonial rule, but after independence in 1975, Angola was engulfed in civil war. This led to increased and unplanned population growth in the country's mining towns as people fled the insecurity of the countryside. In 1978 the Angolan government created the province of Lunda Norte and established the nearby town of Lucapa as the provincial capital. Up-until 1980 the mines south-east of Dundo annually produced close to 10 percent of the world's total gem-quality supply of diamonds.
The effects of the Angolan civil war (1975-2002) impacted Dundo's diamond mining operations. The rebel forces of UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola) sought to disrupt the governmental mining companies of Diamang and Endiama, by allowing workers to act as wildcat prospectors. This and the continued violence saw the collapse of Endiama in Dundo with the loss of 18,000 jobs. This resulted in miners turning to UNITA, who either took a cut of their profits or sold the diamonds to fund their resistance to the government, this practice was known as blood diamonds.
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Wikipedia