CACONDA

town, west-central Angola. It is located 140 miles (225 km) inland from the Atlantic Ocean on the Hula Plateau (a high tableland sloping westward to the Atlantic coast in a series of descending escarpments) at an elevation of about 5,400 feet (1,650 m). A Portuguese military post was established at Caconda about 1680 to facilitate expansion of the slave trade. In the late 18th century, a permanent presidio, which became the first European settlement in the highlands, was built there. Until the late 19th century Caconda remained an advanced frontier post for Portuguese colonial trade with the interior. In 1948 the first colonato (planned agricultural community) for black Africans in Angola was established near the town. Various crops (including corn and cotton) and especially cattle were raised with the assistance of agronomists. Pop. (1960) 38,185.