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Benguela

Middle Africa

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Benguela is a city on Angola's Atlantic coast and capital of Benguela Province, founded in 1617 as Sao Felipe de Benguela by Portuguese governor Manuel Cerveira Pereira. It grew into a major hub of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil and Cuba, and its municipality had 561,775 residents at the 2014 census, estimated at 692,202 by 2022. Its economy today rests on coffee, corn, sisal and tobacco farming and fishing, and it is linked by the Benguela Railway to Angola's interior and onward to Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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