The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

The Okavango region is currently part of a transboundary project extending to three neighboringcountries—Angola, Namibia, and Botswana. This article discusses the unequal trajectory and presentconditions for such cross-border cooperation, with a particular focus on Angola. Angola’s disadvantageousposition is above all due to the lasting effects of war that adversely hindered the developmentof structures and resources to engage in such joint programs. The central argument is that theinequalities pose particular challenges to the country to accompany the pace of the neighboringcountries. The article looks at the fragilities focusing on institutional resources, Angolan policy background,existing dedicated institutions, and human resources, as they are major concerns for post-warreconstruction. On the other hand, it poses questions regarding resilience effects on local levellivelihoods and on the future environmental management of the Okavango. This article is based ona literature and documental review and on data from fieldwork where local communities have to relymore heavily on the available natural resources in absence of others.

In São Tomé and Príncipe, both the size of the informal economy and the scope of the mechanisms of organization and representation are little known. A research conducted recently showed that the almost always limited and irregular incomes generated in this sector are also associated with precarity and a lack of social protection mechanisms. While initiatives led by the state and supported by international funders positioned unions as privileged organizations for representing and supporting the workers in this sector, the limited results generated opportunities for the creation of sectoral bottom-up initiatives. The discussion is then focused on the areas addressed by the initiatives of specific sectors and types of activity – taxi and motorbike drivers and money exchangers – comparing the outcomes with those of the unions in terms of increased social protection and representation.   

After nearly 30 years of civil war, Angola gained peace in 2002. The country’s diamond and oil wealth affords the national government the means to pursue economic reconstruction and urban development. However, in the diamond-producing region of Lunda Sul, where intense fighting between MPLA and UNITA forces was waged, the legacy of war lingers on in the form of livelihood uncertainty and uneven access to the benefits of the state’s urban development programmes. There are three main interactive agents of urban change: the Angolan state, the mining corporations, and not least urban residents. The period has been one of shifting alignments of responsibility for urban housing, livelihoods and welfare provisioning. Beyond the pressures of post-war adjustment, the wider context of global capital investment and labour market restructuring has introduced a new surge of corporate mining investment and differentiated patterns of prosperity and precarity in Lunda Sul.

Since its independence in 1975, Angola’s capital Luanda has beengoing through deep processes of demographic, economic, socialand physical transformations. In this article, apart from introducing the case study of private condominiums in the general discussion on urban studies in the Global South, we focus on the dynamics of transformations regarding housing for the mid/upper strata, providing the background for the emergence and recent expansion ofgated communities/condominiums, a phenomenon that has acquired major importance in the recent decades in Luanda. The specialised literature relates the demand for and multiplication of these residential structures in Africa with issues such as the search for safety associated with demonstrations of exclusive lifestyles. In the case of Luanda, the authors found––through a case study and qualitative data collected among residents and non-residents of condominiums––that, contrary to the results from other studies, condominiums in Luanda are essentially sought after primarily for functional reasons such as access to infrastructure and better living.

The training of Angolan police officers under various international cooperation programs contributes to the construction of an original policing model in the country. The end of the war, the creation of training facilities in the country and the development of public policies favourable to the development of the national police lead to the renewal of the sector based on a model in a way hybrid as a result of various influences progressively built over the years. This article analyses these changes based on data collected in Angola as part of a wider research about the context of international cooperation in the area of training ofpolice officers.

The Kwanhama, whose ancient kingdom occupies a vast area in Angola and in Namibia, are one of the African cases of people partitioned by the establishment of colonial borders. This division, along with the profound transformations of the last decades in the region – war, displacement and conditioned circulation – shaped the way a common identity has acquired different features in both countries. In the (under-researched) Angolan side, cross-border identity has progressively concentrated on the idea of a split between the two countries, as the Kwanhama king, Mandume, is believed to be buried on both sides of the border; and at the same time on the notion of a common belonging across the border. Based on data collected through fieldwork interviews in the Cunene province in Angola, this article adds to the discussion of the apparently ambiguous ideas of partitioned and shared notions of belonging.

For most of the latter half of the 20th century, war carved the contours of settlement and mining activity in Angola. The aim of this article is twofold: first, to contrast migrant andurban livelihoods during the war, distinguishing between artisanal guerrilla diamond-diggingsettlements and the refuge ‘government cities’, and, secondly, to compare recent patternsof migration, livelihoods, mineral production and aspirations among urban residents. This article focuses on four urban settlements in the Lundas’ diamond-producing provinces, tracing wartime diamond growth in boom towns and cantonment in government cities. Post-war urban regeneration is characterised by investment in formal planned cities, and constraints on the informal mining boom towns and their garimpo artisanal miners. Questions are posed regarding these settlements’ population movements, livelihoods, residents’ conceptions of urban life and their quest for modernity. Amidst the multiplicity of wartime legacies and the envisaged reconstruction, renewed perceptions of urban life are increasingly focused on non-mining livelihoods.

Across Africa, growing economic inequality, instability and urbanization have led to the rapid spread of private security providers. While these PSPs have already had a significant impact on African societies, their impact has so far received little in the way of comprehensive analysis.

Drawing on a wide range of disciplinary approaches, and encompassing anthropology, sociology and political science, Private Security in Africa offers unique insight into the lives and experiences of security providers and those affected by them, as well as into the fragile state context which has allowed them to thrive. Featuring original empirical research and case studies ranging from private policing in South Africa to the recruitment of Sierra Leoneans for private security work in Iraq, the book considers the full implications of PSPs for security and the state, not only for Africa but for the world as a whole.