Housing microfinance in post-conflict Angola. Overcoming socioeconomic exclusion through land tenure and access to credit

Abstract

Angola's last four decades of near-continuous conflict have resulted in the displacement of over one-third of the population and massive damage to property and infrastructure. Social networks and local institutions were seriously eroded. The war has urbanized Angola, with an estimated 60 per cent of the population now living in the cities, three-quarters of them in informal peri-urban musseque settlements. They have no clear legal title to the land they occupy and suffer increasing social and economic exclusion that inhibits their full participation in a post-war recovery. Development Workshop is a human settlements NGO that has been working in Angola since 1981 and is developing approaches to postconflict shelter challenges. Two linked programmes are discussed in this paper. Development Workshop's KixiCasa housing microfinance model aims to address the issue of economic exclusion through the provision of microcredit. And together with Ministry of Urbanism and Environment, Development Workshop is piloting a land management strategy using upgradeable occupancy rights and land pooling to facilitate the regularization and securing of tenure rights for the poor. These approaches need to be scaled up significantly to begin to meet post-conflict housing and reconstruction needs and to mitigate against the resurgence of local level conflicts.