Addis Ababa 18 Feb 2015

DW’s director Allan Cain participated in an Expert Meeting on Housing Finance
convened by the African Development Bank and UN Habitat on 18 Feb 2015 in Addis Ababa. The mission
visited sites of the Integrated
Housing Development Program in Addis. 

Ethiopia
has one of the lowest proportions of citizens living in urban areas: only 16.7 percent. However, things are changing
and the country is now urbanizing at an annual growth rate of 3.49 percent. The
combination of high population and urban growth rates, coupled with a high
prevalence of urban poverty, has placed enormous strain on Ethiopian cities,
especially when it comes to affordable housing.

The Ethiopian Government launched the affordable housing program in 2004, building condominium houses in five-storey blocks. They are built both in the center of cities or in peripheral areas at low cost. The condos have been transferred to their owners by way of a computer-based lottery system. When registering for the lottery, applicants choose which condominium site, sub-city and unit type they prefer. Thirty percent of housing units are allocated to women. Presently, there is no income verification system in place but lottery entrants must be able to prove that they have lived in Addis for at least six months. 

Addis Ababa’s
current housing project has a goal of constructing 400,000 condominium units
between 2010 and 2015. Although the program has not met its original targets it
has built 171,000 housing units to date. Up to January 2014, over 800 million
dollars was earmarked for the housing projects in cities across Ethiopia. The
construction of 65,000 houses commenced in 2013 and construction of the same
number of houses will begin in 2015. Some 22,000 condos were handed over to
beneficiaries in 2014 alone, according to the Ethiopian Housing Development
Agency. And the government expects to transfer 76,000 houses to individuals in
2015. Close to one million individuals that seek condos have been registered
since 2012 in Addis Ababa
only.

Two projects were visited Yeka Ayat II Baldaras (2000 units) completed in 2007 in the urban centre and Yeka Abado (18,000 units) nearing completion in the periphery of he city. The projects are financed nationally by issuing Municipal Bonds through the state Commercial Bank. End-user purchase is through three subsidized housing mechanisms:

10% down payment 90% 20 year mortgage at 9% interest  for 
studio and one room units 25 – 40 m.sq.

20%  down payment to own through 15 year mortgage for two bedroom units of 60 m.sq.

40% down payment 60% mortgage over 10 years for three bedroom units of 100 m.sq.

The construction technology is simple reinforced concrete frames with hollow block walls and floor. Hundreds of local small and medium contractors have been
trained and 60,000 local jobs have been created. Technology is simple and local
using timber-pole scaffolding, no cranes are used. Roadways are built using
labor-intensive methods of traditional coble-stone employing 33% women in the construction.

Martin Mendelsohn é um investigador de pós-graduação da Namíbia trabalhar com Development Workshop, em Luanda, na sua tese de mestrado pela University of Cape Town Planning Faculdade sobre o impacto do para-trânsito (especificamente candongueiros) em Luanda. Ele reuniu literatura sobre estudos para-trânsito feitas em outros lugares para encontrar paralelos úteis entre os candongueiros e matatus no Quênia que, possivelmente, os táxis mini-ônibus na África do Sul. Ele tem realizado trabalho de campo em Luanda, entrevistou taxistas, estudou os tempos de viagem e mapeadas resultados utilizando ferramentas GIS.

Apesar do rápido crescimento de Luanda e do investimento significativo no desenvolvimento novo satélite-dormitório da cidade, (muitas vezes financiados chinês), a cidade ainda carece de um sistema de transporte urbano acelerado. Alguns arteriais e ring-estradas foram construídos, mas uma estratégia para o transporte público rápido ainda não foi implementado. Veículos particulares utilizados por altos funcionários e passageiros de classe média e alta têm levado a sério congestionamento rodoviário. O serviço de transporte público não pode atender a demanda. Consequentemente, a maioria da população é dependente de serviços de táxi privadas e informais do setor de paratransit. Mini-autocarros do tipo Combi candongeiros e motos de transporte de passageiros chamados kupapatas dominam este mercado paratransit.

A pesquisa sugere que o planejamento do transporte urbano em Luanda deve desenvolver um híbrido entre o transporte público rápido sobre principais rotas de viagem e empregam paratransit em rotas coletor locais. Nós de transferência, portanto, deve ser planejado em pontos estratégicos.

ENGLISH:
Martin Mendelsohn is a Namibian graduate researcher working with Development Workshop in Luanda on his Masters thesis for the University of Cape Town Planning School on the impact of para-transit (specifically candongueiros) in Luanda. He has gathered literature on para-transit studies done elsewhere to find useful parallels between the candongueiros and matatus in Kenya than possibly the mini-bus taxis in South Africa. He has carried out field work in Luanda, interviewed taxi drivers, studied travel times and mapped results using GIS tools. 

Despite the rapid growth of Luanda and the significant investment in new satellite-dormitory-city development, (often Chinese financed), the city still lacks a rapid urban transit system. Some arterial and ring-roads have been built but a strategy for rapid public transport has not yet been implemented. Private vehicles used by senior civil servants and middle and upper class commuters have led to serious road congestion. The public bus service cannot meet the demand. Consequently, the majority of the population is dependent on private and informal taxi services of the paratransit sector. Combi-type mini-buses candongeiros and passenger-carrying motorbikes called kupapatas dominate this paratransit market.

The research suggests that urban transport planning in Luanda should develop a hybrid between rapid public transport on principal travel routes and employ paratransit on local collector routes. Transfer nodes therefore must be planned at strategic points.

After 27 years of civil
war, Angola entered the 21st century as one of the most dynamic economies in
the world. In a context of ‘infrastructures for resources’ policy, Luanda, its
capital city, has been the first beneficiary of a veritable boom in the
construction sector. This workshop explores the production of new housing
patterns in the periphery of the city through the study of two housing projects
located more than 20 kilometres from the central business district. Panguila is
a relocation settlement for impoverished people evicted from the city centre;
Kilamba City is marketed as a ‘New Centrality’ aimed at the emerging middle
class. While of incommensurable scale and quality, both settlements illustrate
the contradictions of the new forms of suburbanism produced in Luanda nowadays.
Built on ethnographic material, the article reads the aspirations of Panguila
and Kilamba City inhabitants against the official view on these settlements
propounded by the National Reconstruction Programme. It shows that individual
dreams of home ownership meet top-down attempts to discipline urban behaviours,
while demonstrating that neither is reconciled with the pragmatism of practices
on the ground. The workshop eventually suggests that new suburbs in Luanda
represent less a rupture with previous urban patterns than they continue the
production of a certain socio-spatial order.