Participatory & Inclusive Community Land Readjustment in Huambo, Angola, presented by DW Director Allan Cain to the UN Habitat Expert Group Meeting on Slum Upgrading using Participatory Land Readjustment, December 3-4, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya.

1. PARTICIPATORY AND INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY LAND READJUSTMENT IN HUAMBO ANGOLA
PRESENTED BY: Allan Cain
POSITION: Director – Development Workshop Angola
EMAIL: allan.devworks@angonet.org
‘SLUM UPGRADING USING PARTICIPATORY AND INCLUSIVE LAND READJUSTMENT:
DEFINING THE RULES OF THE GAME’
EXPERT GROUP MEETING (EGM)
Nairobi, 3rd and 4th of December, 2013.

2. Post Conflict Urban Challenges
• Forced migration during
the war, provoked the
urbanisation of Angola.
• Massive destruction of
social and physical
infrastructure.
• Rapid urban growth,
largely due to the war
continues even after
conflict ended.
• 60% are under 18.
• More than 80% of
the population live in areas
without legal land tenure
nor access to basic
services.

3. Governance Challenges
• A major constraint to the implementation of urban
plans remains the poor management of land by the
government and consequently the poor security of
tenure of the urban population
• Despite the affirmation of the government to the control
of land, a vibrant real estate market exists for the
land occupied both formally and informally
• A better understanding of the dynamics and formal and
informal mechanisms that influence the urban land
markets are key factors in the process of urbanization
and the upgrading and prevention of slums.

4. Legal Environment
• Angola has inherited their legal framework from the
Portuguese Civil Code which did not easily accommodate
itself to African land tenure practice.
• Large areas of land were appropriated for Portuguese
settlement and incorporated into the colonial cadastre.
• The post independence constitution affirmed the State to be
the owner and manager of land.
• Land Laws of 1991 and 2004 affirmed that colonial cadastre
as the basis of land titling therefore weakening traditional
land claims.
• The concept of Customary tenure was incorporated into the
2004 Law but this has not yet been regulated.

5. Legal Environment
• The 2004 Law removed all protection that the Civil Code
had provided for ‘occupation in good-faith’ or user rights.
• Thanks to Civil Society advocacy, a window was given for
informal occupants of land to regularise their land claims
and apply for legal titles.
• Provincial and municipal administrations had little capacity
to administer and approve land claims.
• Full titles for urban land are only issued in fully urbanised
planned areas.
• By-Laws for the regularisation of peri-urban land have still
not been published.

6. Institutional requirements
• The Angolan Government has adopted an ambitious policy
that promotes the construction of one million houses.
• Through this programme the Government aims
to eliminate most slum settlements known as Musseques.
• In this process the Government intends to facilitate self-help
construction of 685,000 homes
• DW responded to a request for help from the Huambo
Provincial Government who was under pressure struggling
to respond to the high number of requests for housing sites.
• DW proposed adopting a land readjustment strategy that
would provide local government an opportunity to capture
some of the added land value as cities grow to invest in
slum upgrading.

7. Partcipatory Inclusive Land Readjustment
Land Pooling or readjustment provides a market mechanism to
regularize peri-urban settlements, providing sustainable
infrastructure and access to services while at the same time
strengthening the rights of tenure and protection of assets of
the poor. It also provides local government an opportunity to
capture some of the added land value as cities grow.

8. Two case studies
•
•
•
•
•
Two pilot land readjustment projects were implemented
in the Province of Huambo.
the projects were implemented in 2006 – 2008 during the
decade after the end of the civil war
at a time when important decentralisation reforms were
underway through the creation of municipal
administrations that were assigned new powers for
managing land.
the first case study was completed before the reforms,
when provincial urban planning officers still had authority
the second was implemented after the publication of the
“decentralisation reform law”. Municipal administrators
had been given the responsibility of managing land

9. Huambo Land
Readjustment
Sites 1 & 2
2
1

10. Inclusive Land readjustment Metodology – Case 1
1.
2.
3.
Creation of multi-stakeholder management
group with Provincial Govt, traditional leaders,
local administration & NGO
Mobilizing community support explaining the
objectives of the project first to the local leaders
and then to the population in general.
Overcoming resistance by land owners warning
that people risked losing their land without
compensation if consensus was not found.
Base line study to create a household census
& community diagnostic. Revealed local
traditional governance structures and existing
infrastructure. Participatory methods deepened
community mobilization process and provided a
basis for the future (readjustment) plan.

11. Use of Geographic Information Systems
Remote
sensing:
Applied the
tools of GIS to
urban
information
gathering using
aerial
photographs
Participative
and satellite
Mapping
images.

12. Land readjustment Metodology
4.
5.
4.
Registry of existing land owners and boundaries
mapped using a hand held GPS and GIS software.
Meeting with all land owners on a bairro by bairro basis
with adjacent neighbors present. Very few cases of
overlapping or conflicting claims were found.
Development of a physical readjustment plan by DW
architect/planners, the management group & local
administrator presented to a group of local residents.
30% of the land reserved for infrastructure & roads
35% for redistribution to local land owners
35% for public plot sale with income to cover basic infrastructure costs
Definition of rights was granted by Provincial
Government. New and old land owners received
‘occupation licenses’ & entered land registry/cadastra
being developed by the Huambo administrartion.

13. Land readjustment Metodology
7.
8.
9.
10.
Implementation of layout marking the new property
boundaries with wooden pegs using only optical
instruments & measuring tape. Plots numbered.
Redistribution of parcels with titles in proportion to
previous size of land ownership and sale of
remaining 152 parcels. Half of all land owners
received only one parcel. The remainder received
between two and six. A total of 225 plots were
released onto the market.
Implementation of basic infra-structure.With the
funds acquired by the sale of the public land parcels,
boreholes and water-points were installed and the
road and service lines were cleared.
Advocacy - results of the readjustment project have
been presented in workshops, seminars and training
events across Angola.

14. Case Study 2
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
New legislation on decentralization in 2007 took local land management
authority out of the hands of Provincial Governments and transferred it
to the Municipal Administration.
The Municipal Administrations were comparatively weak and
inexperienced in managing their new responsibilities.
Municipal authorities had no incentive to create surpluses because
income from local sources reverted to the State Central Budget.
The management committee, now lacking the authority of the Provincial
Government, could no longer control the sale of the parcels,
The Municipal Administration distributed the parcels for free to
individuals who were on the Administrations long waiting list for land for
housing.
Without cost-recovery there were no funds to invest in basic
infrastructure.
The management committee in the absence of funds tried to pay for
services in-kind (the bull dozer owner was compensated with 2 parcels
of land)
No other infrastructure has been implemented in the area to date.

15. Local land administration
• The linkage between the local land administration
system
 demonstrated that by losing the essential ingredient of the
financial control and the opportunity to use the land market to
“create value” the project did not generate sufficient resources to
sustain itself.
• Integrate existing practice into an inclusive policy
 Existing informal arrangements for access to land are well
established and have strong legitimacy among the peri-urban
population.
 The existing practice in Huambo was recognized and framed
into local land administration and hopefully influence national
policy.
• Building municipal cadastres
 Providing an opportunity for municipal government to collect
registration or transfer fees or revenue from property taxes

16. Participation
• Angola inherited a limited culture of participation in urban
planning practice and weak local governance
• However, growing land markets and strong private sector
interest can make land readjustment a viable option for
under-resourced local governments.
• The decentralisation process in Angola is gradual with the
creation of consultative councils in 2007 and the commitment
to democratically elected Municipal Councils in 2015.

17. Role of non-state actors – private sector
Private Sector:
• land readjustment model reduced land-conflicts and by
regularising tenure status.
• By giving secure land tenure, much more value was
given to land in these previously neglected bairros.
• It showed how market mechanisms created land value
that benefited former occupants, new owner-builders,
financial intermediaries
• The project changed the land market dynamics in the
neighbourhoods close to the project sites.

18. Role of non-state actors
Civil society & community based organizations.
• The projects demonstrated the crucial role of social
mobilisation (by the NGO) and the need for Government
buy-in to secure the success of the project.
• Advocacy to protect and promote women’s land rights
• the project demonstrated that the proportion of families headed
by women is 46%.
• women's rights to land can be strengthened by legislation that is
compatible with the Angolan Family Code
• Create a higher public awareness of urban land rights
and obligations
• carry out comprehensive public education campaigns on land
rights and new responsibilities of urban residents
• Advocacy to bring Angolan land legislation into closer
alignment with international good practice

20. Obrigado
SISTEMA NACIONAL DE
INFORMAÇÃO TERRITORIAL