Willy Piassa, gerente do programa da Development Workshop de Vozes dos Cidadãos para de Mudança Urbana foi o orador principal no Dia Internacional de Redução da Pobreza em Angola. Ele apresentou os resultados da pesquisa de pobreza urbana em Luanda que emprega Indicadores de Desenvolvimento do Milênio para medir progresso na realização dos ODMs. O artigo enfoca o indicador-chave da posse da terra e demonstra que a grande maioria dos pobres urbanos de Luanda estão a viver sem a segurança da posse da terra.

The majority are without legal title for the houses where they live: Willy Piassa, Development Workshop’s manager of the Voices for Urban Change program was the keynote speaker at Angola’s International Day of Poverty Reduction. He presented the results of the Luanda urban poverty research that employs Millenium Development Indicators to measure progress against achieving the MDGs. The article focuses on the key indicator of “land tenure” and demonstrates that the vast majority of Luanda’s urban poor are living without the security of  tenure.

A longstanding IDRC grantee Development Workshop combines satellite observations with old-fashioned grassroots data gathering to measure the impact of Angola’s rapidly growing slums on the environment. Since 2002, when decades of civil conflict ended, Angola has struggled to rebuild. Its planners are hampered, however, by a shortage of reliable data about their own country’s population and environment. If Angolan policymakers were to take effective measures to tackle urban destitution and environmental degradation, they needed a clear picture of the geographic distribution of slum dwellers and of their social and environmental circumstances. An ambitious IDRC-funded research project, aimed primarily at documenting the environmental impact of encroaching slums, has been painting this picture. The study was conducted from 2009 to 2011 by Development Workshop.

Presented to: International Workshop on the Musseque by Willy Piassa on October 8, 2013 in Luanda. The breadth of Angola’s “informal sector”—and its pervasive role in the lives of most Angolans—cannot be overstated. Throughout the urban musseques of peri-urban Luanda in which approximately 1 in 3 Angolans currently reside, essential services—such as water and food distribution—are provided mainly through private initiative in the informal sector. For most Angolans land has been obtained through informal mechanisms. UNDP reported that “Luanda has become the largest laboratory for survival strategies in the world.” Urban research and program implementation data on Luanda should inform the development of new and important urban policy planning and poverty reduction frameworks.

O Centro de Estudos e Investigação Científica de Artes, Arquitectura, Urbanismo e Design (CEICA) irá organizar, com a Bombástico, o VIII Fórum de Arquitectura sob o tema “Musseque”. Durante cinco dias, a Universidade Lusíada de Angola irá acolher alunos e professores nacionais e internacionais para a realização de diversas actividades como workshops, concursos, exposições, conferências e estudos a decorrer durante o VIII Fórum. Partindo do primeiro objectivo deste Workshop Internacional “Compreender o musseque de forma multidimensional de maneira a que a intervenção no seu espaço não signifique anular a sua identidade”, interessa à Curadoria orientar os seus convidados sobre o seu papel neste evento a acontecer entre 7 e 11 de Outubro de 2013.