This working paper presents the findings of the study on the process to turn around the city of Luanda, the capital of Angola.1 Decades of civil war that followed the country’s independence in 1975 saw millions of people internally displaced, large areas mined and most of the country’s physical, economic and social infrastructure and services destroyed or degraded. Although most of the conflict took place in the countryside, the impact was felt in Luanda, the main recipient of the massive influx of displaced people seeking safety. The failure to invest in the infrastructure needed to handle this influx resulted in the severe degradation of the city’s urban core and the growth of sprawling slums.

A legislação Angolana permite a criação de cinco direitos fundiários, nomeadamente os direitos de propriedade, de superfície, do domínio útil civil, do domínio útil consuetudinário e o direito de ocupação precária. Apesar disso, a situação actual das terras em Angola é de grande complexidade.

This dissertation is a case study of the Zango social housing project in Luanda, the capital of the southern African state of Angola (see map 1). Through an examination of the Zango project, I seek to shed light on the workings of the Angolan state and the ways in which it sees and does development in order to provide insight into the nature, workings and possible outcomes of state-led development under non-democratic conditions.

From Bangkok to Rio de Janeiro, urban areas in the global South have experienced steady expansion in recent decades. Informal settlements on the peripheries of Johannesburg or Jakarta have swelled to accommodate rural migrants or foreigners searching for work or better services. Almost overnight, satellite cities and peri-urban developments in Beijing and Luanda have materialised to house an emerging middle class. In urban areas as diverse as Addis Ababa and Dubai, city building projects showcasing a country’s world class aspirations or its resource wealth have multiplied (Schindler, 2015).