Baptist Convention of Angola the northern provinces of Angola (particularly the province of Zaire), the Baptist Convention of Angola has maintained a distinctive multi-ethnic character with an active ministry functioning in ten of the eighteen Angolan provinces since the time of Portuguese colonization. After the war for independence ended in 1975, the Convention had a period of natural stagnation owing to the civil war that dominated the next three decades. In part this stagnation was due to the forced abandonment of the country by the missionary forces from America, Portugal, Denmark and Brazil who, up to that point had led the evangelistic spread of
Angola–Soviet Union relations United States, the People's Republic of China and the Mobutu government in Zaïre. The United States, South Africa, and several other African nations also supported Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), whose ethnic and regional base lies in the Ovimbundu heartland of central Angola. The government of the Soviet Union, well aware of South African activity in southern Angola, flew Cuban soldiers into Luanda one week before November 11, 1975, the date on which Angolan nationalists had agreed to declare independence. While Cuban officers led the mission and provided the bulk of the troop force,