This paper describes the water and sanitation programmes that the NGO Development Workshop has developed in Luanda over the last 15 years, working with community organizations, local government and the official water and sanitation agencies. These had to be built within a city where the population was growing rapidly, in part due to war forcing people to flee rural areas in a country which had had more than 40 years of conflict and economic decline. Incomes are also too low to allow conventional solutions, yet there was no tradition of community provision (and government agencies were wary of working with community organizations).

The paper describes how the NGO Development Workshop began work in Angola in 1981, at the invitation of the Angolan government and how it helped set up a programme to upgrade musseques (peri-urban squatter areas). A pilot project for water and sanitation in one such musseque developed into a larger programme after political changes in Angola in 1990, which allowed the emergence of community associations and NGOs. Water and sanitation were important components of the work because of the priority given them by residents (and because residents could manage housing construction individually but not water and sanitation). The project demonstrated two viable approaches to improving provision: community-managed public standpipes and family dry-pit latrines. It also demonstrated how an NGO could support residents’ groups in developing and managing these models – and also how to bring in government organizations (even if they were weak and lacking in funding). It also made clear the need for models for water supply and sanitation that could be managed and funded within the community. The paper then describes the larger water and sanitation programmes that developed, based on these approaches.