Bailundo

Bailundo lies on Angola’s central plateau, where high ground gives the country a cooler and wetter setting than the coastal lowlands. It was the seat of the Ovimbundu kingdom of Bailundo, known in the local language as M’Balundu, one of several small kingdoms that grew up on the Bié Plateau out of Bantu farming populations who had drifted in from the north over the previous millennium. They practised a sophisticated agriculture and raised chickens, goats and pigs, with a few cattle bought from herders to the south.

A decisive change came when the Portuguese established a colonial bridgehead at Benguela in the sixteenth century. Kingdoms like Bailundo saw the advantage of caravan trade between Benguela and the peoples of the east, from whom they obtained wax, rubber, honey and ivory. Each caravan had a professional leader and diviner, and trade agreements between the chiefdoms encouraged regional specialisations such as metalwork and cornmeal. Slavery and the slave trade were also part of Ovimbundu society. Highland farming and the long caravan roads to the coast framed life in the kingdom.