Portuguese language in Africa The nation-states with Portuguese as an official language in Africa are referred to by the acronym PALOP () and include the following: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. Portuguese is a primarily urban language having a reduced presence in rural areas, except for in Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe, where the language is more widespread. South Africa also has approximately 300,000 speakers of Portuguese, primarily settlers from Madeira and white Angolans and Mozambicans who emigrated from 1975 onwards, following the independence of the former colonies. The civil wars in Angola and Mozambique also resulted in
South West Africa Republic of Namibia on 21 March 1990, although Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands were only incorporated into Namibia in 1994. The South African authorities established 10 bantustans in South West Africa in the late 1960s and early 1970s in accordance with the Odendaal Commission, three of which were granted self-rule. These bantustans were replaced with separate ethnicity based governments in 1980. South West Africa South West Africa (; ; ) was the name for modern-day Namibia when it was under South African administration, from 1915 to 1990. Previously the colony of German South West Africa from 1884, it was