Angola is an impoverished country that depends on its oil industry to pay for reconstruction after a long civil war. It is one of the two top oil-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa but most of its people still live in dire poverty and have one of the lowest life expectancies in the world: 46.5 years, according to the United Nations. The tens of billions of dollars the country has earned from oil have brought little benefit to the majority of its citizens.

Angola has a reputation for severe corruption which Global Witness has been reporting on for the last decade. Investigations by Global Witness have raised serious concerns about corruption in Angola, and the United States, a major consumer of Angolan oil, said in a recent official report that governmental corruption is "widespread" in the country.

In the late 1990’s Global Witness’s work on Angola focused on how diamonds were funding the civil war.