The party received 61 per cent of votes cast during Wednesday's ballot, the Angolan electoral commission said on Friday.
The opposition Unita party, which received 27 per cent, disputes the commission's count. The commission said 98 per cent of the vast country's votes had been counted.
Meanwhile, Angola's Casa-CE alliance party gained nearly 10 percent of the vote.
This week's election marks the end of nearly four decades in power for President José Eduardo Dos Santos (75).
Voting in the election ended on Saturday 26 August due to delays in getting the ballot papers to more than a dozen polling stations in remote areas.
Ufatteligt rigt på alt
Angola er ufatteligt rigt og var juvelen i Portugals koloniimperium, Lusitania, indtil kolonihærens sammenbrud i 1975 og de portugisiske settleres masseflugt, der tappede landet for uddannet arbejdskraft.
Efter uafhængigheden var Angola scene for en blodig og ødelæggende borgerkrig mellem tre frihedsbevægelser indtil 2002. MPLA trak sig sejrrigt ud af krigen med støtte fra et cubansk ekspeditionskorps.
I dag er landet på papiret rigt med enorme oliereserver, men størsteparten af befolkningen lever i fattigdom og en lille, rig elite i sus og dus. Angola har således Afrikas laveste gennemsnits-levealder og højeste børnedødelighed.
Se meget mere om en afrikansk sværvægter med ondt i demokratiet, der ikke er kendt af så mange i Europa på https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola
Udpeget arvtager
The win for the MPLA party means that the presidency passes to former Defence Minister Joao Lourenco (63), who has been apointed as the successor of Mr Dos Santos. Se meget mere om den nye præsident på
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%A3o_Louren%C3%A7o_(politician)
However Mr Dos Santos, whose 38-year reign makes him the world's second-longest serving president, will remain in control of the party.
On Thursday, the opposition Unita party, whose Isias Samakuva has been the main challenger to Mr Lourenço, said it had carried out its own count and that its results were very different from those announced by the commission.
Under Angola's voting system, people were asked to choose both the candidate and party in the same election.
Nye mand anses for ukorrupt
Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (NAI) i Uppsala i Sverige skriver i sit seneste nyhedsbrev fredag:
Lourenço is seen as a candidate of stability and continuity. He is widely respected and well connected”, says NAI researcher Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues, who is herself Angolan.
Lourenço also has a clean reputation, a rare feature among Angola’s political elite. The anticorruption watchdog Transparency International ranks Angola 164th out of 176 countries on fighting corruption.
Critics accuse dos Santos of mismanaging Angola's oil resources and acquiring wealth for his family and political allies.
His daughter Isabel dos Santos last year was appointed as head of state oil company Sonangol, while his son José Filomeno is chairman of Angola's sovereign wealth fund.
Despite the country’s oil wealth, most of Angola's more than 25 million people live in poverty. The collapse in oil prices since 2013 has triggered a full-scale national economic crisis.
“Political transition and the economy are the two major concerns in the eyes of the electorate. There are signs that things might change, with real attempts to diversify the national sources of income, but no-one expects things to move quickly”, says Udelsmann Rodrigues.
José Eduardo dos Santos is likely to remain an influential figure. Recently the Angolan parliament approved a law allowing him to become “honorary president” after his term has ended.
