Agostinho Neto

António Agostinho Neto was born in the village of Kaxikane in Portuguese-colonial Angola, the son of a Methodist minister, and travelled to Portugal to study medicine, becoming one of relatively few Angolans of his generation to earn a medical degree. While in Lisbon and Coimbra, he became involved in anti-colonial and anti-fascist student movements, and his political activities led to repeated arrests by the Portuguese secret police throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1956, Neto co-founded the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which became the primary vehicle for Angola's independence struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. He was imprisoned and exiled multiple times, including a period of forced internal exile in Portugal, but escaped in 1962 to lead the MPLA from abroad, directing an armed liberation struggle that lasted over a decade.

When Portugal's own 1974 revolution led to the rapid decolonisation of its African territories, Angola gained independence in November 1975, and Neto became the nation's first president. He led Angola through the early years of a difficult civil war and ambitious social development programmes until his death from illness in 1979, and he remains celebrated in Angola as both a national founding father and an accomplished poet whose work gave voice to the anti-colonial struggle.