Papers by DW

This chapter in Post-Conflict Natural Resource Water Management begins by outlining the structure of water services in Angola after more than forty years of conflict and then, focusing on Luanda in particular, discusses the importance of the informal water market, the main water provider for most of the urban poor. Based on the knowledge gathered by the Development Workshop, the chapter examines Luanda’s peri-urban water value chain and uses value chain analysis to assess Luanda’s water economy. Several factors affecting success in promoting post-conflict access to water are highlighted, including the need for cooperation with informal water service providers, addressing unresolved issues with those providers, and the importance of social capital in the informal water sector. The chapter examines key elements of community-based water management, particularly robust and low-cost technology, sustainability strategies, and water committees and associations, and concludes with recommendations for national post-war strategies.

This paper responds to Vanessa Watson’s article on the inappropriate urban development plans that are increasingly common in sub-Saharan Africa as governments seek to make their cities “world class”. It describes how the government of Angola has been able to use financing from Chinese credit facilities to build prestige projects that include support for the public-privately developed Kilamba city with 20,000 apartments. The apartments were initially too expensive for most of the population, and the state has had to draw further funds from its housing budget for a subsidized rent-to-purchase scheme to make the units affordable for middle-level civil servants. The author argues that an opportunity is being missed to use today’s income from high-priced natural resources and the current easy access to Chinese credit lines and technical expertise to address the very large backlogs in urban upgrading of basic service infrastructure and housing for the poor. The paper also reflects on a previous post-independence period when a number of African new cities were built, leaving some countries with decades of debt and stagnant development. Can errors from the past offer lessons for future African urban development?
KEYWORDS Angola / Chinese

Development Workshop prepared the Angola Housing Finance Chapter for the 2013 Africa Housing Finance Yearbook, published by the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa. This is the fourth edition of the Housing Finance in Africa Yearbook and reflects the mood and temperature of housing finance markets on the African continent in 2013.

O estudo sobre a migração para Angola foi elaborado pela unidade de pesquisa da Development Workshop, liderada por Andre Melo. Documento preparado por André Joaquim Melo, Development Workshop Angola. Esta publicação foi produzida com a assistência financeira da União Europeia. O conteúdo desta publicação é da inteira responsabilidade do autor e não pode em caso algum ser considerado como reflectindo a posição do Secretariado do Grupo dos Estados de África, Caraíbas e Pacífico (ACP), da União Europeia, da Organização Internacional para as Migrações (OIM) e dos outros membros do consórcio do Observatório ACP das Migrações, do UNFPA ou da Confederação Suíça.

O Observatório ACP das Migrações é uma iniciativa do Secretariado do Grupo dos Estados da África, das Caraíbas e do Pacífico (ACP), financiada pela União Europeia, implementada pela Organização Internacional para as Migrações (OIM) num consórcio com 15 parceiros e com o apoio financeiro da Suíça, da OIM, do Fundo da OIM para o Desenvolvimento e do UNFPA. Fundado em 2010, o Observatório ACP é uma instituição concebida para produzir dados relativos à migração Sul-Sul no Grupo dos Estados ACP para migrantes, para a sociedade civil e para os decisores políticos, bem como para aperfeiçoar as capacidades de investigação nos países ACP para a melhoria da situação dos migrantes e o fortalecimento da relação migração-desenvolvimento.

The monograph published by UN Habitat features case studies on two Development Workshop projects on land readjustment in Huambo, Angola. The monograph provides an opportunity to learn about the potential, and the challenges, of land readjustment in an African city. The cases yield information about managing land readjustment in the absence of formal legislation on land readjustment and in the context of what was, at the time of writing the report, a change in local governance structures following a decree on decentralization. The case studies also give some interesting insights into the possible mechanisms for engaging communities and the conditions necessary to do so effectively.

The case study demonstrates the gaining administrative recognition for local land management practices. The growing land market in Huambo City, along with weak and unenforceable land legislation, fostered the development of local practices in land management, often incorporating customary practices, like the traditional chief (soba) witnessing and the neighborhood bairro-level representatives approving transactions. The majority of urban residents purchased or acquired their land through some locally legitimate mechanism and most have documents to prove it. In response, the municipal authorities chose to recognise these mechanisms, thereby acknowledging and working with existing and management practices.

This publication reflects on promising practices that have emerged through the work of the Tenure Security Facility Southern Africa (TSFSA), funded by the Cities Alliance and UKaid. and which signal new approaches to securing tenure in informal settlements. It is intended to provide guidance to practitioners, officials and communities who are involved in informal settlement upgrading and who see the value of finding more routes into tenure security than the dominance of an ownership paradigm currently allows.

The project operated in six sites in Southern Africa with different partners:
•  Angola: Development Workshop, an NGO based in Luanda
•  Mozambique:  Associação Nacional dos Municípios de Moçambique
(ANAMM) (the national association of municipalities) and the Cities
Alliance Country Programme
•  eMalahleni, South Africa: Planact, an NGO working with the
Springvalley community
•  Cape Town, South Africa: Sun Development Services, an NGO that has
been providing development support in Monwabisi Park
•  Johannesburg, South Africa: Urban LandMark has provided support
over several years to the city’s Regularisation programme
•  Malawi: CCODE, an NGO based in Lilongwe that works to improve the
quality of life of the poor.

Published in Land & Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, Vol. 2-014. Environmental Law Institute & UN Environment Program – Earthscan, New York 2013. Since the end of the armed conflict in 2002, Angola’s recovery and remarkable economic growth have been fuelled by the extractive industries of petroleum and diamonds. The consolidation of peace, however—the reintegration of politically divided populations and excombatants—is much more linked to access to land. Land is not the only resource important to peacebuilding in post-conflict Angola, but it is a primary factor in social reconstruction.

The postwar period in Angola provides an opportunity to resolve long-standing problems that, if left untended, may result in renewed conflict in the future. Angola’s legacy of conflict, which was partly fuelled by injustice related to land appropriation by the governing elites (both exogenous and indigenous), must still be addressed. Successive revisions of land legislation have not fundamentally addressed the underlying problems that originally led to conflict.

Development Workshop’s director Allan Cain presented this paper at the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty on April 9, 2013 in Washington DC. The authors argues that despite a rather challenging environment, land readjustment in Angola has the potential to become an important tool for urban planning.