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🇦🇴 Angola · Huíla Province
♨ Temperature
48°C
⛰ Altitude
1640 m
⚗ pH
7.2
💧 TDS
720 mg/L
🌊 Flow rate
—
📅 Established
Portuguese colonial period; developed 1930s–1960s
✓ Verified on 2026-07-22
The Termas de Chibia are natural thermal springs in the Huíla Province of Angola's southern highlands, located near the town of Chibia (known during the Portuguese colonial era as João de Almeida) at approximately 1,640 metres altitude on the Angolan planalto. The springs emerge at approximately 45–50°C from a geological fracture system within the ancient basement rocks of the Angolan Shield — a Precambrian geological formation shared with the Kalahari and Namibian shield to the south. The Portuguese colonial administration developed thermal facilities here in the mid-20th century, when Huíla Province (and its provincial capital, Sá da Bandeira, now Lubango) was one of the most densely Portuguese-settled regions of Angola, known for its cool highland climate and productive agriculture. The resort attracted settlers and officials seeking thermal respite in one of Portuguese Africa's most temperate landscapes. Angola's independence in 1975 and the subsequent civil war (1975–2002) left the facility in disrepair, but partial rehabilitation has taken place since the post-war reconstruction period. The springs are the most significant of a group of geothermal expressions in the Angolan planalto, a region that combines highland wellness climate, volcanic geology, and extraordinary scenic landscapes including the Serra da Leba escarpment.
| Sodium Bicarbonate | 295 mg/L |
| Sodium Chloride | 168 mg/L |
| Sulphate | 82 mg/L |
| Calcium | 55 mg/L |
| Silica | 22 mg/L |
The Angolan planalto — the southern highlands where Chibia sits — was the homeland of the Nyaneka-Humbe people for centuries before Portuguese colonisation. Their relationship with the thermal springs was both practical (as a source of warmth and mineral-rich water) and spiritual (geothermal features held significance in many Bantu cosmologies as expressions of the earth's internal life). The Serra da Leba escarpment, where the highlands drop dramatically to the Namib coastal desert, is one of southern Africa's most dramatic geographical transitions and frames the entire landscape around the springs.
The Termas de Chibia represent a specifically Angolan form of thermal heritage: a colonial-era facility built in a highland African landscape that was simultaneously shaped by Portuguese settler culture and by the deep indigenous civilisations of the planalto. Angola's long civil war interrupted the development of the facility but could not erase the geological reality of the springs themselves. Post-war Angola's investment in tourism infrastructure has begun to revisit the country's thermal resources as part of a broader effort to diversify beyond petroleum dependency.
The Precambrian basement aquifer feeding the Termas de Chibia is an ancient system with limited active recharge at the rates typical for highland semi-arid environments. Angola's Ministry of Mineral Resources and Petroleum (MIREMPET) oversees geothermal resource management alongside the emerging tourism sector. Rehabilitation of the facility since 2010 has focused on basic infrastructure restoration rather than large-scale expansion.
Websitewww.minhotur.gov.ao
AddressChibia, Huíla Province, Angola