News from SDI/Angolan exchange

in Windhoek, Namibia 1 – 5 July 05 ;
 
From Thursday last week until Tuesday, we in Namibia have shared experiences with 7 community members and 4 service organisations people from Angola (attached is list of Participants) in Namibia, as well as two Zimbabweans, two South Africans and Stefano from SDI in Cape Town. The participants shared information about the activities of the various organisations. The Angolans include members ranging from small family-friends groups doing savings linked to structured, relatively complex micro finance projects (by International NGOs). These groups have also started to realise that their savings can also help them more with their daily needs and were not only a method to access micro finance. The NGO/support staff include micro finance service providers (Care International and Development Workshop) and “community activists”  from a human rights association SOS Habitat (they do not see themselves as a service organisation as their organisation are linking  the communities to fight evictions with  most of their members from the  community, even if the leadership is by a professional). This partner of the exchange kept a sceptic attitude because they think the political environment in Angola is not at all conducive to any serious progress (strong interests will always prevail on the poor needs in the slums, with no respect for any legal rule or human rights). The Micro Finance service providers, on the other side, have been able to preparing the necessary legislation to bring the formal banks on board for financing of micro-finance.
 

The visitors took part in enumeration in an informal settlement wanting to apply for upgrading, and the preparation for the layout of three new blocks of land allocated to the Federation by the City of Windhoek.   
They also had meetings with:    
-  three saving groups busy building about 100 houses,
-  A community involved with an upgrading project where relocations were already done to facilitate the making of a road
-  a service development where a community installed their infra-structure before building of formal houses (they were actually in the preparation stages for doing house construction) and
-  a community where most of the members have completed their houses.  
 
The group also had the opportunity to meet with the Director of Housing at the Ministry of Regional Local Government and Housing and the Chief of Sustainable Development Division in the City of Windhoek.  
 
The Zimbabweans also joined us when a group facing a challenge with members who refuse to pay their land wanted some advise and support. The group ended up taking their own decisions for further actions, after initially expecting instructions about what action to take.  
 
As an outcome of this exchange the community people felt strongly that they should share their experiences with their own communities to enable them to cater for the needs of the poor, not only for loans.  
According to Mama Teresa (from a savings group of disabled people): she was impressed with the solidarity amongst the community, the activities they do together. She would like this kind of initiatives in Luanda, that people could have this unity and work together. The savings should be also for other ideals like housing. Maria Madalena felt that if people can save even when they earn less than US$1 per day, it will help a lot of people.  
 
They would like the exchanges to continue to assist them to become stronger.  They also want the authorities to be exposed to the work of the government and municipality in Windhoek. The people from Santa Clara (over the border from Namibia) have started already with savings and would like support from the Namibians to help with the saving procedures, as well as with the spread-the-Gospel (expansion) practices.    
 
Care International as part of a network of NGOs working on the Luanda Upgrading and Poverty Reduction Programme (LUPP, DFID funded with others) are working in a project that is divided into different sub programmes (finance, upgrading and governance).  The lack of governance is felt very strongly in Luanda with no local administration. They felt that the governance programme workers also would have benefited from this exchange.  A lot needs to be done to change the government, and networking with all partners has to be done to influence government itself.  The participants felt that the community driven process arranged around savings, addresses issues according to their needs and they would like to see that this should be facilitated in their future programmes.   
 
SOS Habitat, recognised that saving could be a way of mobilising people -  but as Angola’s dominant (virtually sole) political party is integrally part of its administration, it would be for them “like working without oxygen”. The current Government dislike for grassroots movements is combined with the influence from the previous, still strong, Soviet politics is and the tradition is that state should organise the masses, if anything.
Although focussing on resisting government is strong, and it was not clear in the end what SOS want to pursue, at one stage in the exchange they did make the link between improving people’s lives through savings and want to include saving promotion as part of their mobilising activities.  And most important -  recognising at one stage that this process can give poor people the break through to start “dreaming” again was a very powerful contribution made by them.
 
At this stage I get the feeling that the community members were very eager to pursue this process and the changes are good that they will start initiating this and  getting support from existing NGO’s will need stronger SDI interventions. These currently involved partners risk to be either too close/accomplices to Government (yet, enough linked to donors to be listened to), or too aggressive and undiplomatic (yet, rich in independent insight).  


Anna and Stefano    
 
 
A M Muller