To date, there has been no research done on rental housing in Angola and as this report will show, there is no government policy concerning rental housing, nor any legal framework. This report therefore provides a first effort to get an understanding of the magnitude and characteristics of rental housing in Luanda. Being a scoping study, this report will open as many questions as it will answer. While providing some first baseline information, it will indicate where future research should focus and how research results should be used to influence housing policy and housing programs. Given the Government of Angola’s increasing interest and willingness to seriously address the nation’s housing problems, this research comes at an opportune moment and has the potential to make a contribution to planning and implementation by introducing rental housing as an important housing sector.

The present study focuses on beginning to answer the first two points, in selected peri-urban informal settlements in Luanda, the capital of Angola. The present study will also create a basis for using other longer-term, large-scale studies being undertaken by DW (in the city as well as other urban areas of the country) to assess the magnitude of the informal rented housing sector, understand how the urban housing market is evolving in Angola’s rapidly growing cities, how this evolution is shaping urban development, and how that urban development is reconfiguring opportunity-structures within the informal economy. The long-term aim will be to identify ways that can be used to improve tenants’ housing options as well as ways that can be used to assist re-investment in housing and improve the availability of housing.

This report documents the five aspects of poverty in Luanda and the way in which they vary spatially and interact in Luanda. Remote sensing was used to identify settlement typologies with similar physical and socio-economic characteristics for the City of Luanda in order to be able to generalize about the status of each of the five indicators in each typology. All areas of Luanda were mapped into different zones based on satellite images and informants who are familiar with the urban environment of the city were then requested to identify and categorize each type of development.

Field research was carried out for each of the five indicators in the form of household surveys, focus group discussions with local people and government representatives and field observations. Different types of field research was conducted for each indicator. Information on access to water and basic services, housing quality and location and the number of people per household was collected by carrying out a household survey of more than 700 households in Luanda. Household surveys were carried out in each of the nine typologies and the sample took into account the number of households in each of these typologies.

A minimum of 60 household surveys per typology were selected, and considerably more households were interviewed in the most populous typologies (old musseques and peripheral musseques). Sample areas were identified which are considered representative of each typology in six different municipalities. The data should not be considered as statistically significant for each typology, but give a good indication of the situation in each typology.

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Women and children in Luanda:

Development Workshop has identified the need for a more systematic collection, in a number of Provinces, of information from a variety of sources that will permit a deeper understanding of the dynamics in those Provinces and subsequently the monitoring of changes there. DW intends to pilot this approach in Zaire Province, in the north of Angola. Zaire Province is one of the Provinces that has been included in the assessment carried out during 2004, and is an area for which there the most serious lack of information. The World Food Programme’s Vulnerability Assessments, for example, do not cover the Province and the Provincial Profile for Zaire lacks information available for other Provinces.

It is a Province that is receiving returning refugees but has been slowest to improved services and infrastructure. It is a Province with some underlying conflicts (between the developed coastal areas and the interior, between returning refugees with an identity marked by the time spent in the DRC and “residents” and between small-scale fishing and foreign trawlers that come close to the shore). It is moreover an Province in which DW intends to develop activities in the near future, because of its pressing needs. DW’s approach in the area will be one of “conflict sensitivity”: it will attempt to work in the Province in a way that does not exacerbate existing tensions and that tries to reduce them; it will attempt to influence other actors to reduce inequalities and latent conflicts in the Province; to this end it will make available to other actors its experience in a number of areas (peace-building, micro-credit, small-scale construction, water and sanitation, information management and mapping).

DW therefore intends to test an approach to information gathering, analysis, archiving and dissemination in Zaire Province that might be used subsequently in other Provinces and that supports this approach.

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The purpose of the research project is: 1) To investigate the progress with the key post-conflict processes in Angola through reviewing the main literature, interviewing key informants and carrying out local levels studies in four different areas of Angola. 2) To test and adapt systems of information collection for continuously tracking progress in creating a sustainable peace and for monitoring and mapping the risks of renewed conflict. 3) To assess (through local levels studies in four different areas of Angola) the strengths and weaknesses of local organisations and institutions (civil society, local government and traditional/community organisations) and how prepared they are to meet the challenges of the post-conflict transitions and processes. 4) To assess the key challenges and risks to peace through analysing the progress with key post-conflict processes in Angola, analysing the strengths and weaknesses of local organisations and institutions and investigating other possible risks. 5) To disseminate the results of these assessments; to raise public and donor awareness of the challenges of creating a sustainable peace in Angola. and the need to consolidate peace after a cease-fire.

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This report is based on a assessment of post-conflict Angola by Development Workshop, carried out in 2004 and 2005 through a review of existing recent research and situation reports, interviews with key informants, visits to four Provinces and localised case studies in these four Provinces. The aims of the report are to create awareness of the challenges of creating a sustainable peace in Angola and create an awareness of the issues, opportunities and constraints for Angola four years after the ceasefire of April 2002.

It has been widely recognised however that major challenges remain in the achievement of a true and sustainable peace for Angola, as in almost all post-conflict contexts. The post-conflict transition involves a large number of processes (economic, social and political) that have to be carried out under difficult circumstances. In Angola, physical, human and social capital has been lost during a long-term conflict. There are thus enormous challenges in transforming the cease-fire into a sustainable peace and in ensuring that the country does not, once again, lapse into violence.

It has also been recognised that progress with the various post-conflict processes has been uneven, and that a lack of progress with the key post-conflict transition processes could have important implications for creating a sustainable peace. It is widely recognised (internationally and nationally) that there is only a short “window of opportunity” after the end of open conflict in which to do create a sustainable peace.

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Map of Studies: