Cunene is a province of Angola. It has an area of 87,342 km<sup>2</sup> and a population of 1,806,417 in 2024.
Ondjiva is the capital of the province; it was previously known as Vila Pereira dâÂÂEça. Ondjiva is the only city in this province with the distance from Ondjiva to Luanda is 1424 km and to Lubango is 415 km. The Cunene River gave its name to the province.
Cunene lies north of the Cunene River, which forms the border between Angola and Namibia. Cunene is traversed by the northwesterly line of equal latitude and longitude.
During World War I the region was the scene of fighting in 1914âÂÂ15. The German campaign in Angola resulted in Germany's temporary occupation of the area.
The inhabitants of the Province are overwhelmingly Ovambo pastoralists. Since the 1960s, they have been under pressure first from white settlers, and after independence from high-ranking military officers and politicians, who acquired large extensions of land which the Ovambo need for the transhumance of their cattle. The ecological, economic and social disadvantages of pastoralism over ranching has been known since the 1970s, but has not been sufficiently taken into account in policy making.
The province of Cunene contains six municipalities ():
The province of Cunene contains the following communes (); sorted by their respective municipalities:
In ', the UNITA under Jonas Savimbi assists CIA operatives Alex Mason and Jason Hudson to find the CIA remnants under Woods held by the MPLA and the Cubans.