From Business Week

Twenty years ago the citizens of Lubango struggled to find fresh bread. Now Angola’s third-biggest city is luring investors in power plants, mines — and Swiss cheese.

“It was primitive” back then, said Joaquim Silva, 64, who has lived in Lubango through Portuguese colonialism, Marxist rule and civil war. “I was working at Banco Nacional de Angola responsible for statistics and there was nothing in the stores. Now it’s wild capitalism.”

Silva is the owner of Kimvest Construcoes Lda, an Angolan construction company that generates about $3 million a year in revenue. He’s just one of scores of local and foreign entrepreneurs seeking to take advantage of the regeneration of a city that was ruined by a 27-year conflict that ended in 2002.

In Lubango, located on the Plano Alto or High Plateau about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) south of the capital, Luanda, repairs to roads, clinics and dams are in full swing. The government led by President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos sees the town’s mountainous scenery, factories and mines as ways to attract both tourists and investors and help diversify the oil-dependent economy of Africa’s second-biggest crude producer.

Read more at Business Week