Participatory inclusive land readjustment in post war angola - conference on land governance - pretoria aug 2017

1. Participatory Inclusive Land Readjustment
a tool for self-financing sustainable habitat
through land value capture
in Post-Conflict Angola
Development Workshop Angola
Prepared for
Conference on Land Governance and Management in Africa
Pretoria – 15 - 27 August 2017

2. Capturing Urban Land Value
• Urban land markets are key factors in the process of
urbanization and the upgrading and prevention of slums.
• There is a growing interest in Africa in “Land Value
Capture” as a tool for financing urban development.
• The discussion emerges from the discourse on Public-
Private-Partnerships (P3) where private sector real-
estate developers’ money is leveraged by doing deals
with Government to provide land for commercial use.
• P3 projects often involve converting land, re-zoning it or
legalizing informally occupied land. Land conversion
usually results in a substantial increase of its value when
resold by the private partner.

3. (P3) Public-Private Partnerships
• Conventional P3 good practice (promoted in the New
Urban Agenda) argues that the State or local
government partner has an opportunity to capture some
of the increased land value through taxes or transfer fees
for the public good and invest in urban service upgrading
or social housing.
• However, in the worst case P3 projects provide
opportunities for rent-seeking by local officials who
manage land transfers or land registration.
• Communities and occupants of un-titled land usually lose
their assets when expropriated in P3 deals

4. Land Readjustment
• Land Readjustment is a P3 planning tool involving the
rational rearrangement of land parcels and their ownership
with the aim of improving urban infrastructure and also
enhancing utility/value of land.
• The increased value of readjusted land traditionally
benefited owners of real-estate and helped fund public
service improvements.
• It is usually argued by P3 proponents that Land
Readjustment will work only when there is a strong real-
estate market and the Government has efficient planning
mechanisms in place.

5. Participatory Inclusive Land Readjustment
• Participatory Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR)
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.
• Development Workshop was requested by the Provincial
Government in Huambo to to respond to the high number
of requests for housing sites by families returning to the
regional capital after the end of the Angolan civil war.
• Huambo had been the most seriously affected province
during the conflict that lasted almost four decades and
ended only in 2002.

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

7. 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
• Angola has inherited their legal framework from the
Portuguese Civil Code which did not easily
accommodate itself to African land tenure practice.
• Despite the post independence constitution that
affirmed the State to be the owner and manager of all
land, a vibrant real estate market exists for the
land occupied both formally and informally.

8. Legal Environment (cont.)
• Provincial and municipal administrations had little capacity
to administer and approve land claims.
• The Law only gave local municipal authorities the right to
grant land up to 1000m2
• 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.
• Therefore the procedures for issuing land titles are not
uniform throughout the country and it is difficult to
incorporate land-use rights granted by local administrative
authorities into the current law.

9. Huambo Land Readjustment Project
• 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.
• DW created a Local Pilot Project Monitoring Committee to
promote community participation in the project activities
and disseminate information to all participants.

10. Huambo Land
Land
Readjustment
Sites
1
2

11. PILaR Methodology
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.

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

13. 4. Registry of existing land owners and boundaries
mapped using a hand held GPS and STDM 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.
a) 30% of the land reserved for infrastructure & roads
b) 35% for redistribution to former land occupiers
c) 35% for public plot sale with income to cover basic infra-
structure costs
Land readjustment Metodology

14. Land readjustment Metodology (cont.)
6. Definition of rights was granted by Provincial
Government. New and old land occupiers received
‘occupation licenses’ & entered land
registry/cadastra being developed by the Huambo
administration.
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 licenses in
proportion to previous size of land occupation 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.

15. Land readjustment Metodology (cont.)
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. Group management influenced the
installation of electric power, thus being
one of the first settlements created to
receive electric power in a short time.
11. Advocacy - results of the readjustment
project have been presented in workshops,
seminars and training events across
Angola.

16. PILaR in a difficult environment
• 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 land readjustment model reduced land-conflicts by
regularising tenure status and providing financial benefits to
all.

17. The role of non-state actors
• The project used market mechanisms to create land
value that benefited former informal occupants, new
owner-builders, financial intermediaries
• The project changed the land market dynamics in the
neighbourhoods close to the project sites.
• The project demonstrates the crucial role of social
mobilisation (by the NGO) and the need for Government
buy-in to secure the success of the project
• Women’s land rights were protected for the 46% of
households that were headed by women.

18. SISTEMA NACIONAL DE
INFORMAÇÃO TERRITORIAL
Obrigado