Author: Allan Cain. Published in Environment & Urbanization, Volume 22, Number 2. This paper discusses how research on urban land promoted the need to formalize the poor’s informal occupation rights as the government developed a new land policy. The research looked at both formal and informal mechanisms to access land by poor and war-affected populations and at the institutions that influence this. Its findings helped persuade the government of the need for consultation, and promoted more awareness of how upgrading and basic service provision could improve land tenure.

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Author: Allan Cain. Published in Urban Forum (2013) 24:11–31. This paper presents the results of work on property markets in Luanda that permit a better understanding of the nature and economic value of land and identify the problems and potentials the market has to offer. The paper argues for a major reform in public land policy, recognising the legitimacy of common practices in land acquisition and long-term occupation in good faith. Inclusive land management, adapting to both formal and existing informal markets, can contribute to the improvement of urban settlement conditions and economic wellbeing of the poor in post-war Luanda.

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Author: Development Workshop & Urban LandMark. This teaching case study draws on research that investigated the extensive informal land market in Luanda, Angola. It 
examines how urban land is transacted and the mechanisms by which it is secured and regulated. It recognises the intense pressure on urban land experienced as a result of urban in-migration during and since the civil war. It shows the inability of the formal market to provide means for poorer people to access land, transact it and secure formal title or legally defensible land tenure. The case study is based on research undertaken by DW. The work was commissioned by the World Bank, with technical support from Urban LandMark.

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Author: Allan Cain. Published in PCNRM, Vol. 2-014. Angola is often cited as a classic case of natural resources sustaining a conflict (Hodges 2001). Angola’s protracted civil war (1975–2002) was mainly financed through the wholesale extraction of oil and diamonds. The armed struggle for liberation from Portuguese rule started in 1961, but resistance had begun earlier due to the wide-scale expropriation by the colonial regime of another key resource, land.