Moçâmedes
Moçâmedes is a city in southwestern Angola, and the capital of Namibe Province. The city's current population is 345,987. Founded in 1840 by the Portuguese colonial administration, the city was named Namibe between 1985 and 2016. Moçâmedes has a cool dry climate and desert vegetation, because it is near the Namib Desert.
History
The area was first explored by the Portuguese in 1785 and claimed for Portugal by Luís Cândido Cordeiro Pinheiro Furtado, who had been sent there in the frigate Loanda by the then governor-general of Angola, Baron Moçâmedes, who also sent an overland expedition headed by Gregório José Mendes to rendezvous with Furtado. They renamed the bay Moçâmedes in honour of the baron.In 1839 the then governor-general of Angola, Admiral Noronha, sent a fresh expedition to subdue the local chiefs and make them vassals of Portugal.
Moçâmedes was officially founded in 1840 by the Portuguese colonial administration on a bay that the Portuguese originally called Angra do Negro by order of Portuguese prime minister, the Count of Bonfim, who was also head of the Colonial Department.
In 1840 a factory was established and in July of the same year a fort was built at Ponta Negra. The area was colonized mainly by Portuguese settlers from Madeira and Brazil; in the 1850s the Portuguese government also gave sea passage and financial assistance to a large number of German colonists.
The village grew as a fishing port and by the 1960s it had 143 fishing boats and several fish processing factories. The port soon ranked alongside other important fishing ports such as Luanda, Benguela and Lobito.
About 200 km from the city of Moçâmedes the Portuguese authorities founded the Iona National Park, Angola's oldest and largest national park, proclaimed as a reserve in 1937 and upgraded to a national park covering 15,150 km2 in 1964.
Climate
Moçâmedes has a hot desert climate. Despite being well north of the Tropic of Capricorn on the Atlantic Coast, the climate is subtropical due to the cooling effect of the northward-flowing Benguela Current causing July and August to be below 18 °C.Economy
During 1966-67 a major iron ore terminal was built at Saco, the bay 12 km north of Moçâmedes, to serve the iron ore mine inland at Cassinga. Construction of the mine installations and a 300 km railway were commissioned to Krupp of Germany and the modern harbour terminal to SETH, a Portuguese company owned by Højgaard & Schultz of Denmark.Within one year the first 250,000 ton ore carrier docked and loaded with ore in 1967.