The purpose of this project is to research on a plantation asset for potential REDD+ activities. This project is a feasibility study project.

Angola’s economy grew by 3.8% in 2015, and GDP growth will remain subdued, at
3.3% in 2016 and 3.5% in 2017, due to lower crude oil prices. Policies to accelerate economic diversification and strengthen human development and equitable growth are needed to reduce vulnerability to external shocks. Investment in economic and social infrastructure is needed to enhance the sustainability of the country’s urbanisation process.

Following the end of Angola’s civil war (1975–2002), the capital city, Luanda, found itself awash in dreams of becoming a ‘world-class city’. The war had been won by the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which used its dominant position to launch a project of ‘national reconstruction’, ostensibly to repair the broken country materially and politically. In practice, reconstruction became a means of attempting to solidify the MPLA’s political control (Schubert 2015; Soares de Oliveira 2015). Drawing from the country’s oil profits,1 the MPLA-state extended its reach through infrastructure projects and the building of clinics, schools and housing. In Luanda, state and private initiatives intersected in a construction frenzy that rapidly reshaped the city centre and peripheries. New high rises, luxury condominiums and state-sponsored housing remade experiences of urban life

The study of Africa’s new developments and satellite cities has been mostly led under the fundamentally aesthetic typology of ‘urban fantasies’. This provides important elements for a critique of how speculative idioms have been tainting contemporary forms of urban development across the continent, but it does not allow us to apprehend them as modes of city making with particular histories, practices and toolkits. This article leans on the Angolan example to contend with that typology. Drawing on an in-depth study of urban development in contemporary Luanda and its relationship with the Angolan oil complex, it does so in three moments. First, it presents a brief overview of what, in the recent years, has become one of the leading ways of critically assessing urban worlding projects in the African context. Second, it uses an introductory viewpoint into Luanda’s ‘new centralities’ project to contribute towards an improved and more nuanced understanding of what underpins and constitutes the envisioned futures of African cities. And third, it reconsiders and fine-tunes some of the main premises on which the study of Africa’s emerging forms of urban development has been carried out thus far.

For the seventh year in a row, the 2015 CSO Sustainability Index for Sub-Saharan Africa offers a snapshot of seven key dimensions affecting the sustainability of CSO sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa. This year’s Index includes six new countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Namibia, and Niger, bringing to thirty the total number of countries covered1. For the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa included in this volume, the year 2015 had notable highs and lows. Among the bright spots was the victory over the lethal Ebola epidemic. CSO staff and volunteers in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone showed resilience and courage as they worked as respected partners alongside communities, governments, and international agencies to battle the disease. In Guinea local associations established village and neighborhood Ebola watch committees, while in Liberia CSOs helped the government ensure that a strong new surveillance and response system was put into place. Sierra Leonean CSOs continued several important initiatives to assist women and youth affected by the disease. However, the large influx of donor funds for Ebola-related efforts—amounting to US$1.62 billion by the end of 2015, according to the World Bank— introduced its own challenges. Not only did the fight against Ebola divert money and attention from other urgent needs, forcing some organizations to suspend their activities, but the management of Ebola-related funding itself aroused public concerns, especially in Sierra Leone, where the auditor general identified a number of irregularities in the conduct of both public authorities and donor agencies.