PARTICIPATORY AND INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY LAND READJUSTMENT IN HUAMBO ANGOLA PRESENTED BY: Allan CainPOSITION: Director – Development Workshop AngolaEMAIL: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Huambo Land Readjustment Sites 1 & 2

1

2

Inclusive Land readjustment Metodology – Case 1

1. Creation of multi-stakeholder management group with Provincial Govt, traditional leaders, local administration & NGO

2. 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.

3. 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.

Use of Geographic Information Systems

Participative Mapping

Remote sensing: Applied the tools of GIS to urban information gathering using aerial photographs and satellite images.

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.

5. 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 & roads35% for redistribution to local land owners35% for public plot sale with income to cover basic infra-structure costs

4. 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.

Land readjustment Metodology

Land readjustment Metodology

7. Implementation of layout marking the new property boundaries with wooden pegs using only optical instruments & measuring tape. Plots numbered.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. Advocacy - results of the readjustment project have been presented in workshops, seminars and training events across Angola.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Role of non-state actors

SISTEMA NACIONAL DE INFORMAÇÃO TERRITORIAL

Obrigado