Angola - Context and Land Governance

As early as the 1500’s the Portuguese established coastal towns whose primary function was to trade in slaves which linked Angola with Brazil since the sixteenth century. By the time of the formal abolition of slavery between four and seven million Angolans had been ‘exported’ as slaves. Slavery persisted after its abolition in 1836. The Native Labour Code (Código do Trabalho dos Indígenas) adopted in 1899 enshrined the principle of forced labour which persisted to 1961[5]. The forced levies, first of hut taxes, (imposto de cubata), and then ‘native’ taxes (imposto indigena) ensured a supply of labour for settler owned businesses[6]. All native men had to pay tax in Portuguese currency, forcing those who could not pay their tax to work as “contract workers” for settler employers[7]. Contracted labour (trabalho contratado) was the colonial system of forced work which was based on “specific local forms of coercion and work obligations”[8].

Throughout the colonial period Angolan land was taken by force. With the appearance of the first land law in 1838, the colonial government sought to legalise the processes of land occupation by the settlers. This was largely of uncultivated lands, but this land was held in terms of customary tenure systems by the Angolan people. From the mid 1850s Angolans started to feel the real weight of land loss and alienation[9]. In 1880 conflicts over land intensified as agricultural companies took over more land for production. In 1907 the Portuguese demarcated ‘native reserves’ and gave some legal recognition of customary domain territories.  

In the 1950’s and 1960’s large scale land dispossession took place to establish plantations for settlers. Land that was appropriated was incorporated into the colonial cadastre[10]. Land dispossession continued as a colonial military response to the war of liberation.

“Forced resettlement uprooted many Africans, forcing them to abandon lands that they had claimed and cultivated for a long time’[11].

“About one million rural families saw the average land area they occupied reduced from a little more than 9 hectares per family in the mid-1960s to about 4 hectares in 1973, whilst 6,000 commercial farmers had an average of 700 hectares of which only 10 per cent was actually cultivated”[12].

The colonial authorities promoted programmes of forced villagisation. As a result, “local populations were moved without consultation, often leaving behind ancestors’ lands and moving to new vicinities they did not choose… creating massive decades long displacement”[13].

Rural settlement. Photo by JBDodane via Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)

In 1961 a rebellion against forced labour and settler land expropriation marked the start of the anti-colonial liberation war. Initially there were two opposing formations – the anti-Marxist FNLA and the Marxist MPLA which fought against the Portuguese. These had different power bases and represented very different interests. A third movement, UNITA, was formed in 1966. These forces did not defeat the Portuguese. Instead, rapid decolonisation followed after Portuguese military officers staged a coup in Portugal in 1974. This led to the Alvor agreement through which Portugal divested itself of its colonies.   A joint interim government was hastily created with representatives of the MPLA, FNLA and UNITA. This collapsed after MPLA forces occupied the capital Luanda and declared a People’s Republic in 1975. Political conflict amongst Angolans in a cold war context quickly became internationalised as Cuba supported the MPLA through the airlift of 35,000 troops, while South Africa and the USA supported UNITA.  The FNLA was defeated militarily by the MPLA and faded away[14].

As different forces fought each other for state control, 300,000 out of a total of 340,000 Portuguese settlers fled the country – many destroying what they could not take with them[15]. In the process thousands of commercial estates (fazendas) were abandoned and the entire rural trading system was dismantled[16]. Angola’s GDP fell by 43% between 1973 and 1977.

Abandoned settler estate. Picture by JBDodane via Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)

Angola entered into two periods of civil war. The first commenced in 1972 three years prior to independence in 1975 as parties fought for power, before ending temporarily with the signing of a peace agreement between the MPLA and UNITA in 1991. This led to elections in 1992. However, UNITA rejected the MPLA election victory, and the war resumed. 

UNITA collapsed as an armed force when its leader was killed by government forces in 2002, bringing to an end almost three decades of civil war. There are no reliable figures on the casualties. Estimates suggest that between 1.5 and 2 million people died in these wars, while some four million were displaced. After the war millions of land mines had to be cleared before the fields on which rural people depended could be brought back into production. As early as 1997 70,000 civilians in Angola had already suffered amputations as a result of anti-personnel mines[17].

Danger: Land mines Photo by JBDodane via Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)

Despite military defeat, UNITA is reported to have been resuscitated in recent years as a political opposition characterising the ruling MPLA as “an urban, creole, Luanda-centred, Portuguese-speaking elite”[18].

Protracted civil war in Angola and associated displacement of millions of people impacted heavily on an already overburdened and basic land administration system, which was brought to the point of collapse. This means that there is an absence of “up-to-date municipal land cadastres and a registry of housing and real estate”[27].

In these circumstances a combination of informal arrangements and local customary norms have proved to be the most resilient land administration system. More than 75% of urban households in Angola rely on this[28].  In war affected rural settings customary systems had to contend with conflicting claims over land between original occupiers, internally displaced persons, returnees and concession holders. The linkage between informal land allocation and dispute resolution systems on the ground and the legislative frameworks remains tenuous[29].

There are five broad categories of land rights.

Ownership- The state is the overall owner of Angolan land, although land held by embassies and churches is exempt. Registered landholders in urban areas enjoy perpetual rights to occupy and use the land, and can transfer, mortgage, and sell the right. However, the state restricts how land can be bought or sold, requiring that transactions are concluded through public auctions with prices of urban land fixed by state regulated price indices [30].

Customary use rights-Recognised rural communities can obtain “a perpetual right of useful customary domain”. These rights are not transferable. The constitution holds that land held by such communities cannot be the subject of a concession, or have their land is allocated to a third party [31]. However in practice these rights are frequently overridden.

A commercial agricultural estate. Photo by JBDodane via Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)

In 2018 Presidential Order 14/18 created a commission to register rural land for communities linked to   the implementation of the Minha Terra (my land) programme to strengthen the land rights of communities (while also seeking to gain revenue through land related taxes). According to the Angolan government, some 239 communities have been identified for inclusion in the programme, while 31 have been registered with title deeds for customary land[32].  However there remain concerns that this programme has been imposed from the top down and that it will provide limited protection from elite capture of valuable estates and agricultural land in Angola.

Useful Civil Domain. The state can grant rights of ‘useful civil domain’ over rural and urban land by means of a concession contract or lease. Such rights are perpetual rights and can be mortgaged.

Surface Rights Grants. These rights are provisional for the first five years but can be extended to 60 years. 

Precarious Occupation Rights/Temporary Leaseholds. The government is empowered to grant temporary occupation rights up to one year in duration. Such rights can be renewed. 

So, while there is some protection in law, there remains a wide gap between the law and its implementation in practice. In both the cities and the countryside ordinary Angolan men and women appear to be increasingly at risk of being evicted, or having their lands expropriated in favour of megaproject investment without due process. 

The granting of agricultural concessions to foreign investors has long been a source of conflict in Angola. One of the earliest examples is that of the Kilometer 25 dispute in which the Angolan government, together with Brazilian investors, set out to establish a coffee plantation which would have required resettlement of the local community. After a legal intervention, an agreement was reached that the community would not be relocated.

A recent report documents widespread land dispossession as the Angolan government promotes agricultural megaprojects. Between 2015 and 2018 the government was reported to have allocated 1.1 million ha of land for 48 mega investments in agriculture and forestry. Of this just 80 000 ha, or 7% of the area granted was being used productively in 2018[37].

Alongside megaprojects has been land capture by politically connected elites. A traditional leader of a village in Kuanza-Sul province that was removed because of the (illegal) occupation by an Angolan businessman in 2018 described the process of dispossession:

“The former vice-governor gave us a bag of rice, a bag of salt and some blankets to let his cattle graze in our area. Then he sold our area and today the new owner occupies an area of thousands of hectares. We lost our farm areas, live in the area of another traditional leader and cannot even visit the sacred places of our ancestors”[38] 

The government’s Agro Industrial Horizonte 2020 megaproject is reported to have resulted in the expropriation of 76000 ha of land and led to conflict in Cunene. Commercial ranches have been given access to ancestral lands utilised by San communities in Southern Angola. Efforts to resist this appropriation have led to representatives of a local NGO MBAKITA which has sought to defend the land rights of San being assaulted and receiving death threats[39].

In the semi-arid Gambos region the government has allocated the best land historically used by pastoralists to commercial ranching ventures. Some 46 commercial livestock farms have been allocated 2,629 km2 of the most fertile land, leaving only 1,299 km2 of grazing land for the traditional cattle breeders without full consultation and informed consent as required by the constitution[40].

The mining sector in Angola is also expanding. The country has a wide range of mineral resources – most of them yet to be exploited. Current mining activity focuses largely on oil and diamonds.

Drilling for oil. Photo by JBDodane via Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)

Angola is the third largest producer of diamonds on the African continent[41]. During the civil war a large garimpo sector involved in illegal artisanal diamond mining developed. So called ‘blood diamonds’ became an important source of revenue for militia, before the introduction of the Kimberley Process Certificate Scheme (KPCS) in 2002, in an attempt to restrict trade in rough diamonds[42]. Small-scale mining remains widespread despite the requirement of the new mining law of 2011 which requires informal miners to register their activity[43].

Just 500,000 people lived in the capital city Luanda in 1975. Currently some 10 million people live in the city, of whom 7 million live in informal settlements[46]. Luanda is characterised by the presence of informal settlements, predominantly located in the inner city[47]. Since 2002 many people in slum areas have experienced eviction and land uses have been changed to cater for the needs of the urban elite. Reports suggest that the local government frequently fails to comply with expropriation procedures and have arbitrarily evicted occupiers in a number of cases.

The majority of the urban population live in informal settlements. Photo by David Stanley via Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)

The National Development Program (Programa Nacional de Desenvolvimento, 2013–2017) set out policies related to urban and territorial development. This included plans for new towns and amalgamated villages. However negative associations generated by painful histories of past forced removals and displacement has meant that this initiative has had little success[48].

There has been an EU project entitled ‘Strengthening Capacity for Improved Governance of Land Tenure and Natural Resources by Local Government in Partnership with non-state Actors in the Central Highlands of Angola”. This forms part of a regional programme to boost implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines of the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) in ten African countries[49]. This project started in 2014 and finished in December 2017. According to a report on the programme “many of the VGGT principles are already included in the Angolan legal framework on land, but are not respected in practice”[50]. The report highlighted the prevalence of contradictory claims to land and noted that when private claims to land are being formalised on community lands, there needs to be stronger mechanisms for dispute resolution available to communities and government entities.

The author's suggestion for further reading

If you are interested in a more in depth understanding of Angolan history and land issues then we recommend Jeremy Ball’s History of Angola in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. A number of researchers explore land issues in Angola’s post-conflict setting including Fernando Pacheco, Jenny Clover and Conor Foley while Robin Nielsen focuses on women’s land rights. Christina Udelsmann Rodrigues has written extensively on urbanism and mining.  Development Workshop Angola provides a wide range of resources and publications.  USAID’s Angola country profile provides a perspective on property rights and resource governance. Urban LandMark provides valuable analysis of informal land tenure arrangements in urban areas. The round table of German NGOs in Angola has produced useful research on elite land capture and the rise of agricultural megaprojects. The Institute for Security Studies 2020 Angolan Futures beyond Oil provides topical contemporary analysis and future projections.