THIS BOOK STARTS with an introduction to Angola. Thirty years of war have devastated a potentially rich country, forcing large numbers of people to migrate into overcrowded urban areas which suffer from some of the worst health and environmental problems in the world. Until recently, it was implicitly assumed that at least some of the urbanization would be reversed with the end of the war but there is now a growing realization that this is not necessarily the case. The social structures of the rural communities have been shattered and people are unlikely to uproot themselves again and move to a devastated countryside where the clearing of landmines may take decades. Thus the urbanization, currently at 60 per cent, is likely to be irreversible.
At independence in 1975, Luanda, the capital of Angola, was home to half a million people. It now has nearlyr 4 million inhabitants, well over a quarter of the country’s population. Little has been added to the infrastructure, which is more or less limited to the “cement city” that existed at independence. The majority of the population live in musseques, densely built, unplanned shanty towns lacking basic services. Poverty is high, with 60 per cent of urban households below the poverty line and the wide gap between rich and poor expanding dramatically. Poorer families spend 70 per cent of their income on food, and health and transport costs are high.
The book describes how 60 per cent of urban households are below the poverty line and Angola’s health indicators are amongst the worst in the world. The water system was built before independence and the majority of the population rely on water vendors. Families may spend up to a quarter of their incomes on water, and sanitation is equally lacking. There have been very few foreign NGOs in Angola. Emergency relief funding has not transferred easily to development projects, especially since it tends to target the war-torn provinces rather than the capital, which has been spared direct warfare but which has had to cope with a massive influx of refugees. Development Workshop Angola, however, was established in 1981 and has worked continuously in the country ever since. Its focus is on developing community participation and a holistic approach to human settlements. Throughout the 1990s, there was a strong emphasis on improving water supply, on-site sanitation and waste disposal in the musseques.
A system of standpipes, maintained and paid for by user groups, was developed through consultation and experimentation. Communities were helped to organize and elect water committees for each standpipe and were then trained in basic technical and financial management and given responsibility for collecting fees from users. At the time of writing, 220 standpipes had been built under this system, providing clean water for an estimated 120,000 people. Effective partnerships have been built with water committees, water suppliers and local government, so Development Workshop is able to move into a monitoring role as the partnership model becomes more established.
The programme has shown that users are willing and able to pay for a water service. The price of standpipe water is about 12 per cent that of vendor water, which will have a direct impact on food consumption and health. Development Workshop has also undertaken latrine improvement work as well as health education and community mobilization. The approach is one of saturation of a given area, aiming for at least 80 per cent coverage before moving on to a new area. Only at this level can full health benefits be achieved.
A pilot project is running, aimed at reducing the quantity of solid waste in Luanda. Households are encouraged to separate their rubbish and use sand as infill in the surrounding roads before taking other rubbish to an approved tip which is regularly cleared.