The Moçâmedes Railway is a 907 km railway line in Angola, between Namibe (which was called Moçâmedes until 1985) and Menongue in Cuando Cubango province.
The construction of the mine installations and a 300 km railway were commissioned to Krupp of Germany and the modern harbour terminal to SETH, a Portuguese company owned by Højgaard & Schultz of Denmark.
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The area was first explored by the Portuguese in 1785, and was claimed for Portugal by Luís Cândido Cordeiro Pinheiro Furtado, who had been sent there in the frigate Loanda by the then governor-general of Angola, Baron Moçâmedes, who also sent an overland expedition headed by Gregório José Mendes to rendezvous with Furtado.
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The old Yuri Gagarin airport, only about 1.7 km from the city's center, connects the city to the rest of the country.
During 1966-67 a major iron ore terminal was built in the coast by the Portuguese at Saco, the bay just 12 km north of Moçâmedes (present day Namibe).