Papers by DW

The Angolan Government, in its public pronouncements, has put great store in the private sector in driving post-war development and taking the lead particularly in the housing sector. However the World Bank has shown that Angola remains one of the world’s most difficult countries to do business, particularly in the sale and transfer of property. In the 1990s Angola had the daunting task of transforming, what had been a centrally-planned post-independence economy into a more open liberalised one that would attract foreign investment. At the end of the war in 2002 the country hoped to attract international investors and know-how to rebuild its devastated infrastructure and help meet the huge social demands for housing and employment. The Angolan Government rightly identified some of the key steps that needed to be taken to attract the private sector assistance. It committed itself to the provision of fiscal incentives, a reform of the system of credit for housing and the creation of public-private partnerships. However the growth of the private sector in Angola was inhibited by several historic factors.

Angola’s National Urbanism and Housing Programme (PNHU) identified Cooperative Housing as one of the four key strategies adopted to meet the country’s deficit of more than one million dwelling units. The PNHU set a target for the construction of 80,000 cooperative housing units or 8% of the planned one million dwellings in the period up to 2015. Cooperative housing in Angola has roots that date back to colonial times when models were drawn from Portuguese cooperative traditions. In the post independence period after 1975, urban planning professionals returning home from training in eastern European, formerly socialist countries, brought back experience of cooperative housing models from countries where they studied or visited.

Despite the significant demand for rented housing in Angola, it does not feature in Angola’s National Urbanisation and Housing Program1. This is unsurprising as few African Governments do give rented housing the attention that it deserves. Governments tend not to recognize that rental housing exists as an important form of housing tenure and that many households rent their housing at some stage in their housing career. For political reasons home ownership is the preferred housing option. However, rented housing appears to be unavoidable while households raise the capital to buy or build their own home, or while searching for land and saving for the building of a self-build home

USAID is pleased to present the seventh edition of the CSO Sustainability Index (CSOSI) for Sub-Saharan Africa. The index describes advances and setbacks in seven key dimensions of sustainability in the civil society sector in 2015—the legal environment, organizational capacity, financial viability, advocacy, service provision, infrastructure, and public image. The reports are produced by an expert panel of CSO practitioners and researchers in each country included in this year’s index. The panels assess each dimension of CSO sustainability according to key indicators and
agree on a score, which can range from 1 (most developed) to 7 (most challenged). The scores for each dimension are averaged to produce an overall sustainability score for a given country’s CSO sector. An editorial committee composed of technical and regional experts then reviews the scores and corresponding narratives with an eye to ensuring consistent approaches and standards to allow for cross-country comparisons. The scores are grouped into three overarching categories—Sustainability Enhanced (scores from 1 to 3), Sustainability Evolving (3.1-5), and Sustainability Impeded (5.1-7)—which provide additional comparative benchmarks. Further details about the methodology used to calculate scores and produce corresponding narrative reports are provided in Annex A. The index is a useful source of information for CSOs, governments, donors, academics, and others who want to better understand and monitor key aspects of CSO sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa. It complements similar indices covering countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A publication of this type would not be possible without the contributions of many individuals and organizations. We are particularly grateful to the Aga Khan Foundation, which supported the assessments of Kenya and Mali (as well as the indices for Afghanistan and Pakistan) and our implementing partners in each country, who facilitate the expert panel meetings and write the country reports. We also thank the many CSO representatives and experts, USAID partners, and international donors who participated in the expert panels in each country. Their knowledge, perceptions, ideas, and dedication are the foundation upon which this index is based.

With the approaching rainy season in Angola and new reports of cholera, which has been held in abeyance since the epidemic of 2007, public policy makers and consumers alike look at the implementation of long-delayed urban services reforms. Paying for services has become the Government’s mantra since the financial crisis hit two years ago and they were obliged to withdraw subsidies. Civil society and consumer groups at the same time demand equitable access and affordability when asked to pay for the first time for these services.

The last year has seen the introduction of some long-outstanding fiscal reforms in Angola’s housing economy. The new Minister of Housing and Urban Development Ms Branca do Espírito Santo has brought some new insights from her years in senior management in the nominally-private-sector real-estate company IMOGESTIN and even earlier as director of a civil-society organization. She assumed her new post, in March 2016, as Angola entered into its second year of economic crises after the collapse of the country’s commodity prices

The Kilamba project became the show-piece of Angola’s Housing and Urban Development Program announced by the President in 2008. With US$ 3.5 billion financing from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, purportedly backed by oil-revenues, the project was built in a record 18 months by CITIC a major Chinese consortium and completed in 2012. The Kilamba City project, includes 750 apartment buildings, schools, and more than 100 retail units. The new city was built to accommodate 160,000 people in 20,000 flats, each with a floor area of between 110 and 150 m2 and costing from US$120,000 to US$200,000. SONIP Housing had been created in 2013 as a real-estate arm of the Angolan state petroleum company SONANGOL. It was given the mandate to commercialize, manage and distribute 33,255 housing units of which 20,000 of them were in the recently completed Kilamba City. Kilamba has gained fame as being the largest Chinese built housing complex in Africa and the show-case of Angola’s post-war National Urban Housing Program. During the first year of SONIP’s management of Kilamba, it only distributed 12,425 units and acquired a substantial waiting list of impatient aspirant clients. Smaller, most affordable, three bedroom T3 units were in great demand but the larger expensive five-bedroom

units remained empty. By September 2013 the three and four bedroom units were exhausted2, and clients reluctantly accepted the larger units, but often expressed concerns about their capacity to make the payments of US$ 12,000 per year.

Access to land markets for housing and urban development continues to be both a challenge and an opportunity. Since its independence in 1975, and most notably since the end of the war, in 2002, Angola has undertaken to create a suitable legal framework to address the complex issues related to land access in the country. In 2004, the country promulgated a new law on land that has sought to strengthen areas taken as weakness in previous legislation. During the following decade a set of new legislation and regulations was published, covering issues such as concessions, and the functions of the local levels of government in the administration of land. However, ten years later, in December 2014, a national consultation on issues of land, led by private organizations came to the conclusion that the Land Law 9/04, did not deliver the expected results. Two key areas that have not been addressed in the legislation are the administration of land in peri-urban areas where the majority of the urban population live without the formal ownership and the regulation of customary land rights, particularly in rural areas.

“Alternatives to African Commodity-backed Urbanisation: the Case of China in Angola”, a paper presented by DW director Allan Cain at the Annual World Bank Conference Conference on Africa (ABCA 2016): Managing the Challenges and Opportunities of Urbanization in Africa, at Oxford University, June 13 to 14, 2016.