Development Workshop has been working in Angola since 1981 at the national government’s request to assist in developing policies and programs for human settlements and self-help housing. Through the last decades, DW has adopted a strategy of supporting the emerging Angolan civil society and the process of local government decentralisation while working closely with local community organisations.
DW is the oldest NGO in Angola and worked for many years in the context of a protracted and complex humanitarian crisis. We have always worked to build up local capacities and searched for sustainable solutions even within the emergency environment. With the end of the war DW was uniquely positioned as a “development organisation,” to transform its programmes to meet the new needs of transition and reconstruction.
DW is engaged as a critical partner in the Government’s decentralisation programme in the areas of municipal participatory planning and land tenure reform. Our current program in Angola has parallel focuses; on peri-urban communities where the provision of infrastructure, basic services and community economic development remains a serious challenge, and on supporting the rehabilitation of social infrastructure and supporting the processes of settlement and social infrastructure for communities in the central highlands and the provinces of Cabinda and Luanda. With more than three decades of research and practice in Angola, DW has been able to offer lessons for replication and influencing public policy in sectors of land tenure, housing, water supply and poverty reduction.
Allan Cain O.C.
Director, Development Workshop.