Case Study Country - Angola Angola has been in active conflict for the past forty years. Conflict began as a nationalist struggle for independence against its colonising nation, but later, it also became a site for a proxy war between cold war powers fighting for their own ideological and economic systems. Since the fall of communism, the economic motivation for conflict has become more visible. 1961 marked the beginning of a long and bloody struggle for independence from Portugal. Three factions were established, the MPLA (The People s Movement for the Liberation of Angola), the FNLA (The National Liberation Front of Angola), and UNITA (The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). All three fought against their Portuguese rulers as well as between themselves. Ironically, it was political change in Portugal in April 1974 that provided the impetus for the Portuguese to withdraw from Angola in 1975. Following independence peace lasted a matter of weeks because the three political groups could not work in harmony. The resulting armed conflict has been characterised as a battle for control of the natural resources of the country and as a battleground for the superpowers to play out their ideological agenda through support for different factions. The Bicesse Accords (May 1991) and The Lusaka Protocol (November 1994) brought hope for peace but both failed to secure it. The Angolan conflict is now, more than ever, motivated by greed. The government has control of the oil resource and UNITA controls the diamond mines. It is estimated that up to 1.5 million people have been killed during this conflict and thousands of people have been displaced from the rural areas to the relative security of the cities. The urban/rural ratio has consequently shifted from 15:85 in 1970 to 43:57 in 1997. The effect of such sustained fighting on the economy has been crippling, with inflation currently around 270% per annum. GDP growth is 4% p.a. but this figure needs to be treated with caution considering that oil revenues contribute nearly 50% of Angola's GDP. Until a lasting peace can be achieved, long-term development and effective exploitation of the bountiful natural resources in Angola will be difficult. There have been some experiments with microfinance services throughout the 1990's.