Cidades 2003 An Interdisciplinary Approach
Jochen Oppenheimer Isabel Raposo
Project Results
The project ran from 1998 to 2002. It offered an opportunity to train social scientists with different disciplinary and institutional origins at junior, PhD and post-doctoral levels. It joined research institutes in Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. Field research produced abundant empirical data in an area were these data are rare, dispersed and unreliable. Appropriate methods of interdisciplinary and comparative inquiry were applied and research results were restored to the suburban communities subject to the inquiry in Luanda and Maputo. They were also discussed with the scientific communities in these countries and in Portugal. This EADI seminar is a further occasion to discuss and disseminate the results of the project at an international level.
The main research results can be summarised as follows:
In the 1980s and 1990s the simultaneous impact of war and economic liberalisation hit the suburban population, which was already suffering from the hardships of centrally planned underdeveloped economies. Economic privatisation, exposure to the global economy and state retraction accentuated unemployment in the formal sector and made acquired professional skills obsolete. High inflation, elimination of subsidies for basic goods and reduced social spending further degraded already difficult living conditions. The influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war (the influx is higher in Luanda than in Maputo) has led to suburban intensification and extension amplifying problems in all areas, including housing, sanitation, health and environment.
In this situation the majority of suburbanites is turning to the informal sector for economic survival, where small and micro trading and service activities predominate. The expansion of these activities occurs on a horizontal level by multiplication, and only on rare occasions on a vertical level when the size, technology and scope of the economic units is upgraded. Under these conditions a substantial improvement in livelihoods cannot be expected.
Overuse of already insufficient and depleted basic socio-economic infrastructures by a rapidly growing population (as a result of natural growth and the massive influx of persons displaced by the war) is further deteriorating the living conditions of suburban dwellers. Both the differences between urban and suburban areas as well as those within these latter areas are substantial. The suburban differentiation of housing conditions and forms of habitat reflect an ongoing global process of social and economic differentiation. The improvement in the families' housing conditions - often a long-term enterprise by stages - essentially depends on their own efforts and their access to networks but needs more promotion by community-based public and NGO action.
Faced with the adversities, hardships and risks of suburban livelihoods, families cope by diversifying their sources of income and their economic activities. Furthermore, since the advent of peace, in 1992 in Mozambique and in 2002 in Angola, geographical dispersion of activities (in the city, in rural areas, in foreign countries) has become an increasing part of the coping and social reproduction strategies of suburban families. Economic and spatial dispersion of activities is , however, threatening the group coherence of the family, which is the key condition of its survival as such. The permanent creation and recreation of networks of solidarity and mutual assistance are other expressions of short- and long-term risk reduction strategies in the presence of poverty and high degrees of vulnerability. New autonomous forms of self-organisation for resolving local problems have arisen in suburban areas of Luanda and Maputo, but have come up against numerous difficulties. Widespread poverty, lack of literacy and growing mistrust endangers their consolidation. The lack of associative experience as a result of single-party rule in the early years, and later due to the growing individualisation promoted by urban life and economic liberalisation are also hampering the capacity for local self-organisation. This adverse situation has, however, led to the rise of numerous religious congregations, which not only assist people spiritually but also materially, for example in situations of family distress (illness, death).
Economic and political liberalisation in Mozambique and Angola allowed the emergence of a more vigorous civil society, in particular of NGOs. Given the international approval of non-governmental action, the extent of poverty in suburban Luanda and Maputo and the states' insufficient capacity to cope with this problem, NGOs are becoming increasingly active in the suburbs. The scope of this action is, however, generally punctual, sometimes sectional and of a palliative nature. To reverse this situation some NGOs have recently come to defend the fact that the sustainability of their projects calls for long-term emancipatory actions, articulated by public administration at local, municipal and central levels. These actions include the strengthening of grass-root organisations and public structures.
New modes of urban management influenced by liberally oriented approaches have emerged in both capital cities. They tend to accentuate social differentiation and reduce the means of public action in urban management. In opposition to this tendency another is emerging based on the strengthening of municipal institutions accompanied by the creation of partnerships between public institutions, civil society organisations and urbanites/suburbanites, at local and central, national and international levels.
The civil war being the main causative factor of the rural exodus to Maputo and Luanda in the 1908s and 1990s, its end did not cause a reverse movement at a substantial scale. The suburban areas have maintained or even increased their fundamental attractiveness in relative terms in spite of the difficulties of daily life. The regained accessibility of the rural hinterland may even strengthen the comparative advantages of suburban life because it facilitates coping strategies based on economic and geographical straddling.
