ANGOP or Angola News Agency is the official Angolan news agency, based in Luanda. It was founded in April 1975 under the name Agência Nacional Angola Press and later renamed in Agência Angola Press when Angola became officially independent on November 11, 1975. The agency was a close ally to the former Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union also called TASS.
Like any news agency, ANGOP collects, treats and distributes national and international news, both in Angola and abroad. ANGOP maintains editorial autonomy and independence from the government.[1]
Many international agencies use ANGOP as source of information, among them Thomson Reuters, AP, AFP, EFE, ANSA, Tanjug, IPS, Prensa Latina, Xinhua, Tass, AIM (Mozambique), ST-Press (São Tome e Príncipe) , ANG (Guinea-Bissau), VNA (Vietnam), BTA (Bulgaria), ADN (former East Germany), CTK (former Czechoslovakia), PAP (Poland), MTI (Hungary), Agerpres (Romania), ATCC (North Korea), ANN (Nicaragua), APS (Algeria), Azapa (former Zaire), ABP (Burundi) and ACI (Congo Brazzaville).[2]
By Presidential Decree No. 11/78 published on Feb. 3, 1978, ANGOP became a state communication organ. The agency has continued to grow from that date. By the 1980s it had developed into an organization employing over 300 personnel, mostly journalists and editors working on 24-hour shifts. There were offices located throughout the country and five offices abroad, in Portugal, Brazil, United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
ANGOP is a member agency of the non-aligned countries.