Introduction
Angola is located in west central Africa with a population of 13.4 million. The economy evolves around the offshore extraction of oil, and the extraction of diamonds. Over the last decade, the yearly revenue per capita decreased by about 47.5%. Today, Portuguese is spoken by a majority of Angolans and has become the common language of communication in urban areas.

History
Higher education was launched only towards the end of the colonial era with catholic higher education for future priests, in Luanda and Huambo, in 1958. In 1962, the Estudos Gerais Universitários de Angola was created in Luanda as part of the Portuguese university system, providing facilities for the study of agriculture, forestry, civil engineering, medicine, veterinary medicine, and education; in 1966 forestry and veterinary medicine were transferred to Huambo, education to Huíla. In 1968, the Estudos Gerais became the autonomous Universidade de Luanda, launching study programs in the natural sciences (Luanda) as well as in geography, history, and romance languages and literature (Huíla). In 1962 the Catholic Church opened an MA study program at its Instituto Pio XII for social work in Luanda.

Shortly after independence, all non-state educational institutions were closed down, including the institutions of Catholic higher education. In 1979, the name of the university was changed into Universidade de Angola. In the following years, a law school and a corresponding MA program were created in Luanda. The School of Arts dissolved and replaced by ISCED (Instituto Superior de Ciências da Educação), a school essentially designed for training secondary school teachers. In 1985, the university was named Universidade Agostinho Neto, after the first president of the republic.

Since colonial times, education in Angola always served to create and preserve social differences, and to consolidate social relations of domination. This is particularly evident for higher education. Until independence, the vast majority of the students in higher education were Portuguese or their descendants; in 1974, only an estimated 5% were of other origins.

After independence, education—from the elementary to the higher level— became free of charge, and expanded considerably, while racial discrimination was eliminated. Soon after the transition to the Second Republic, the decision was taken to replace this system by permitting and even fostering the establishment of private institutions of higher education, directly or indirectly fuelled by the state. As early as 1992, the Catholic Church launched Angola’s first private university, the Universidade Católica de Angola, which began to function effectively in 1997, in Luanda.

Enrollment

Institutions of Higher Education
In 2001, the following institutions of higher education and programs were present

In Angola today, there are no BA programs (bacharelatos), only MA programs (licenciaturas), which last four to five years. The structure also provides for mestrados, or post-MA programs leading to an academic degree (mestre) in its own right, which is at the same time a step toward the PhD (MD, etc.) degree. However, there are no post-MA programs functioning in Angola.

Finance and Management
The financial resources of higher education has four origins: the state budget, students’ fees, contributions from private and international donor organizations, and paid services to individual or corporate users. The public university depends overwhelmingly on the state budget. The recurrent budget comprises four main components: personnel expenses, purchase of goods, payment of services, and other expenses. The first component always constitutes more than 80% of the overall budget although the adjustment of salaries constantly lags far behind the constant increase of the living costs. The capital budget is granted by the Ministry of Education and administered by the university and it does not provide funds for research. The weak economic performance of the country, and the expenses of the continuing civil war, have led to significant reductions in the proportion of the overall state budget dedicated to education expenses.

Students’ fees constitute the main financial resources for the private universities, though not much information on their financial situation is made publicly available. The Universidade Agostinho Neto has evening study programs for jobholders requiring fees. The public university and some private universities have benefited from contributions by sponsors operating within the country, such as the oil and diamond companies as well as diverse international entities. The Universidade Nova de Angola counts on contributions from an Angolan foundation.

Faculty and Staff
In 1998 at the Universidade Agostinho Neto, the staff numbered 736, 10% of whom were foreigners; 11% were full professors, 7% associate professors, 21% assistant professors, and 61% teaching assistants. Only the first two categories were composed of PhD (MD, etc.) holders. The student-teacher ratio was 11: 6.

Research
During the First Republic, the task of organizing scientific research was attributed to different ministries as well as to the Universidade Agostinho Neto where the National Center for Scientific Research (CNIC) was created. Under the Second Republic, this structure was slightly altered by the creation of the Ministry of Science and Technology in 1997, with the CNIC attached to the new ministry.

Under the First Republic, the investment in scientific research was low. In the field of social and human sciences, the MPLA government undertook or commissioned some research along Marxist lines. Generally, research was held in low esteem resulting in the absence of a tradition of research, and in an almost total lack of links between university teaching and research--well illustrated by the fact that in several cases, teaching staff have reached the highest hierarchical level without ever having carried out research. Self-evaluations by the Universidade Agostinho Neto paint a somber picture of the research aspect of higher education underlining the reasons why it has not been significant: lack of laboratories and research centers, lack of financial resources, lack of stimuli for research in the legal statutes governing the career of the teaching staff, and non-existence of a School of Social and Human Sciences.

The situation has remained very much the same under the Second Republic, except for relative methodological freedom (though political and ideological pressures persist). In 1999, the Unversidade Agostinho Neto approved a resolution on the creation of centers of scientific research and postgraduate (post-MA) teaching, but the implementation of this document has not yet begun. Thus higher education in Angola continues to neglect both actual research and the creation of research competence.

Governance and Administration
One of the main problems facing higher education in Angola since independence is frequent interference from institutions holding political power. The ruling party intervened, formally or informally, in the “hiring and firing” of each member of the teaching staff. For the social and human sciences, only party members of solid Marxist-Leninist convictions were appointed. The university was strongly conditioned by Angola’s affiliation to one of the two blocks of countries which then existed.

The political changes introduced since the early 1990s led to profound transformations of this situation. In 1995, extensive legislation was approved, conferring full autonomy to the university, which ceased to be institutionally subjected to orders from the MPLA or the Ministry of Education. A system of internal democracy was introduced, guaranteeing free elections of all organs and officeholders by the teaching staff. The latter was guaranteed by selection processes based exclusively on academic merit.

Note: For detailed account on the state of higher education in Angola, please consult: Paulo de Carvalho, Víctor Kajibanga, and Franz-Wilhelm Heimer, African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook (Damtew Teferra and Philip. G. Altbach, eds. Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 162-175.