Angola - Luanda Urban Food Bank Project

This project was designed in 1992 and through opportunities for extension and replication has continued. The main project components are: water supply; sanitation; solid waste management; community health and community development; training cuts across all these components.

The project’s originally stated aim (in 1988) was to provide nutritional assistance to vulnerable groups served by three NGO projects in the periphery and Musseques of Luanda. Common to each NGO sub-project was the need to provide material incentives to increase productivity. Within the distorted urban economy existing at the time; even a skilled project worker’s official monthly salary scarcely fed her/his family more than a few days.

The Luanda Urban Food Bank Programme aims to improve the productivity of national Non-Governmental Organizations’ (NGOs) and church-based organizations implementing small-scale development projects in peri-urban areas of Luanda by providing food rations to supplement workers’ salaries. Because of the economic crisis brought on by years of civil war; household incomes rarely meet the monthly costs of living. Without supplementary assistance; project workers would be forced to spend time in search of food or in parallel income producing activities. Time and energy would be taken away from project responsibilities; thus affecting project implementation.