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| Angola Studios |
Jeff: In our feature today, we’re paying a visit to the largest of the former Portuguese colonies – the country of Angola on the west coast of Southern Africa. It’s a country we’ve never covered before on Wavescan, so here with the story of broadcasting in Angola is Ray Robinson in Los Angeles.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. The Republic of Angola covers an area of over 480,000 square miles – approximately twice the size of Texas, France, or the Australian State of Victoria, and three times the size of California. It lies along the South Atlantic Ocean, north of Namibia, west of Zambia and south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s the second-largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world after Brazil in terms of both area and population, and it’s the seventh-largest country in Africa.
The 2024 census recorded a population of 36.6 million. The official language is Portuguese, of which about 45% of the population claimed to be native speakers, primarily in the capital city, Luanda, and in other towns and cities along the coast. There are also about a dozen indigenous languages, spoken by the remainder of the population across the rest of the country.
The region of Angola has been inhabited since the Stone Age, with various Bantu states being formed there in the 13th century. The largest was the Kingdom of Kongo (Kongo spelt with a ‘K’), with whom Portuguese explorers began to establish relations in 1483. The Portuguese began colonizing the coast in the late 16th century, and quickly established the slave trade. When that was banned in the 19th century, it disrupted and destabilized the local economy. But, diamonds were discovered by geologists in the northeast Lunda region in 1912, and European settlers then began to establish a broader presence in the interior of the country. Commercial diamond mining began in 1917, and in the first half of the 20th century, some 400,000 people emigrated from Portugal to Angola.
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| Classic QSL from Angola |
The story of broadcasting in Angola began in 1931, when a radio ham, Alvaro Nunes de Carvalho, started transmitting programs under the call sign CR6AA. He lived in the central coastal town of Benguela, and later nearby Lobito, initially using a transmitter of only a few watts. However, he was known to remain active in this manner until at least 1957.
The first steps to commercial broadcasting were laid in September 1936, 90 years ago, when a group of radio enthusiasts in the capital city of Luanda formed an association. They planned to buy a transmitter, and model their station after both CT1AA in Lisbon, Portugal, and also the Radio Clube de Moçambique which was already on the air in Lorenzo Marques.
In February of the following year, 1937, they purchased a 100 watt transmitter and obtained the call sign CR6RC. The first test transmissions, on medium wave, were then made under the name Radio Clube de Angola. This transmitter remained in use until 1940, when a 250 watt unit replaced it. Then at the end of the war in 1945, they purchased a 1 kW transmitter, and in the early 1950’s started broadcasting on domestic shortwave, which greatly increased their coverage.
But, not to be outdone by this progress in the capital, other radio enthusiasts further south formed another association under the name Radio Clube de Sul de Angola, which was later changed to Radio Clube de Lobito. They also obtained a 100 watt RCA transmitter and began broadcasting in May 1938. The two nearby towns of Lobito and Benguela have always been fiercely competitive, and so it was no surprise when a third association was also formed later in 1938, the Radio Clube de Benguela, which obtained the call sign CR6RB.
So far, all these radio clubs had been located along the coast, but Capt. Ferreira de Carvalho, the governor of the inland province of Huila, was also a radio enthusiast, and he set up a station in the provincial capital on a high plateau at the edge of the desert. This was station CR6RJ which began broadcasting in May 1939, and before long they had arranged joint broadcasts (or program relays) with the station in Lobito.
In 1943, a small group in another town, now called Huambo, further inland along the Benguela railroad, purchased a 75 watt transmitter from a local ham who was also the manager of a plantation. This club too was ambitious, and within five years they had purchased a 1 kW transmitter and contracted two professional announcers from Lisbon – Fernando Ribeiro and Joana Campos. It was Ribeiro who coined a slogan that was used by the station for many years – “A Portuguese Voice in Africa”.
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| Classic QSL from Angola's Radio Clube |
Other radio clubs along the coast and inland set up their own stations in the years that followed, and it wasn’t until 1951 that the government opened an official station in Luanda designed to cover the whole country. And even then, much of its output was relays of programming from the shortwave service of Emissora Nacional in Lisbon. A broadcasting department was created within the Directorate of Postal and Telephone Services. They already had a Marconi transmitter that was used for point-to-point communications, and it was over this transmitter that initial test broadcasts were made. Regular broadcasting began in late 1953 under the call sign CR6RZ, as Emissora Oficial de Angola.
In 1954, the Roman Catholic Church set up their own station, Radio Ecclesia, broadcasting from Luanda – a station which incidentally is still broadcasting today over a national network of a dozen or so FM transmitters covering all the main population centers.
In 1961, oil was discovered by Gulf Oil off the coast of Cabinda, and this has become Angola’s second largest export after diamonds. But, it also led to a protracted anti-colonial struggle, which was to consume most of the 60’s and early 70’s. These were very unstable and often violent years, politically, and radio was very much involved in the conflict.
In 1965, the first 100 kW shortwave transmitter was inaugurated in Luanda, and a year later, ‘A Voz de Angola’ started broadcasting in association with Radio Comercial in Huila province. Radio Comercial, as its name suggests, was the only entirely commercial station in Angola.
By 1972, five separate stations operated from Luanda. In addition, there were 17 private stations, including 12 radio clubs, and Radio Diamang, which operated for the benefit of the diamond miners in Dundo.
Following the collapse of the right-wing Portuguese government in Lisbon in 1974 in the so-called Carnation Revolution, all Portuguese military activity in Africa was suspended, and independence negotiations were brokered for all Portugal’s overseas colonies. Angola was granted independence as a one-party republic the following year in 1975, but then the country descended into a devastating civil war between three main factions:
• the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba,
• the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), supported by the United States and South Africa, and
• the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), supported by Zaire.
All three factions took advantage of the gradual Portuguese withdrawal to seize various strategic positions, acquire more arms and enlarge their military forces.
The ruling party, the Marxist/Leninist MPLA nationalized all the existing radio stations into what is now known as Radio Nacional de Angola, or RNA. But, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a degree of liberalization was allowed in Angola, and UNITA and FNLA became legally recognized opposition parties. Private ownership of radio stations became possible again, although at very low power levels. Today, RNA operates four national FM networks and over 20 regional stations, also on FM. Alongside them, there are two national private networks on FM, including the Catholic Church’s aforementioned Radio Ecclesia, and 16 local private stations in the four main provinces.
RNA had a number of shortwave transmitters at a main site at Mullembos near Luanda, and at a secondary site at Cazenga, mainly operating in the tropical bands, but the last time any shortwave transmissions were listed in the World Radio TV Handbook was in the 2024 edition. There are, however, still three transmitters operating on medium wave – two in Luanda, and one in the far north west corner of the country at Soyo in Zaire Province. The two in Luanda are:
• RNA’s International Channel with 25 kW on 945 kHz, and
• RNA Channel A, which operates in Portuguese 24x7 with 10 kW on 1135 kHz
The International Channel has rotating three-hour program blocks in four languages – Lingala (a language widely spoken in Central Africa, especially in parts of the DRC and Angola), and in French, English and Portuguese. It operates from 0500-0200 UTC, and here’s a recent ID from that channel in Portuguese:
Audio Clip of ID in Portuguese, available at: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/wavescan
Their broadcast day ends with an English block, and this was how that block started last month at 2300 UTC on Friday 24th July. As you will hear, the heavily accented English is very difficult to understand!
Audio Clip 2 - Start of English Block, 2300 UTC, 2026 07 24 (Fri) available at: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/wavescan
I have heard other presenters, though, and they’re not all as difficult to understand as that one. And yes, many of RNA’s national and regional stations and the International Channel are all available as online streams from RNA’s website at rna.ao – just look for the tiny button labelled ‘Emissoras’ in the bottom corner. The English blocks are at 11-1400 and 23-0200 UTC daily.
Back to you, Jeff.
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