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For the duration of Angola’s twenty-seven-year civil war, the central state did not control up to 80% of its nominal territory. In the aftermath of its 2002 victory over the Unita rebels, however, the oil-rich MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) regime enthusiastically embraced the commitment to build a self-styled “modern state” across Angola. The resulting effort to break out of the enclaves it had long held and occupy the vast and sparsely populated territory, extend civil administration and rebuild infrastructure is a key political dynamic in present-day Angola. This article is an attempt at understanding the post-2002 state-building drive in Angola’s periphery through the prism of both the regime’s ambitions and the historical trajectory of the Angolan state and centre-periphery relations.