# Working towards informal public transport improvement and integration in Luanda: process and outcomes of international technical cooperation between France and Angola

Herrie Schalekamp, Solène Baffi, Sophie-Anne Monplaisir, Lucile Boudet

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Herrie Schalekamp, Solène Baffi, Sophie-Anne Monplaisir, Lucile Boudet. Working towards informal public transport improvement and integration in Luanda: process and outcomes of international technical cooperation between France and Angola. Thredbo International Conference Series on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport, Centre for Transport Studies, University of Cape Town; Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney Business School, Sep 2024, Cape Town, South Africa. **hal-05129508**

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# Working towards informal public transport improvement and integration in Luanda: process and outcomes of international technical cooperation between France and Angola

**Herrie Schalekamp***, Solène Baffi, Sophie-Anne Monplaisir and Lucile Boudet

Codatu, 44 Avenue Paul Kruger, 69100 Villeurbanne, France, +33 4 28 70 60 10, herrie@mtracs.net

**JEL classification:** R420; O210; O190; F350

**Keywords:** Public Transport Policy; Informal Public Transport; International Technical Cooperation; Angola; Sub-Saharan Africa

## ABSTRACT

Development finance institutions (DFIs) increasingly recognise the importance of informal public transport (IPT) in Sub-Saharan Africa, and are expanding the scope of their urban mobility-focused technical cooperation and financed projects to include it. Since 2022 Codatu, an NGO based in France, has managed such a technical cooperation programme, funded by AFD, in Angola. The cooperation comprised leveraging Codatu's international network to respond to knowledge gaps and support local government and operator capacities to plan for improved formal and informal public transport. Activities undertaken in partnership with local stakeholders included regular meetings, expert missions to Angola, and study tours and conference visits in Africa and Europe.

This paper reports on the cooperation's process and outcomes, with a focus on its IPT thematic area. Key findings include that IPT was the mainstay of the urban mobility system, with a nuanced service offer. Government officials and operators recognised this, though national policy advocated relegating IPT to a subsidiary role. The cooperation enabled exposure to IPT improvement processes elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing alternative approaches to the replace/displace policy discourse. To realise improved and integrated IPT, government and IPT stakeholders must develop a concrete change management strategy and address persistent capacity constraints.

## 1. Introduction

Development finance institutions (DFIs) form an important stakeholder group providing impetus for addressing urban public transport challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. One of the mechanisms that DFIs employ to do so is to support technical cooperation activities with national governments in the region, whether directly or through intermediary organisations. Though often linked to DFIs' finance operations, such technical cooperation is a distinct area of DFIs' activities. Examples of these cooperation mechanisms include the French Development Agency's (AFD) Fund for Technical Expertise and Experience Transfers (FEXTE) and the World Bank Group's Reimbursable Advisory Services (RAS) (AFD, 2024; World Bank, 2024a).

<footnote>*Corresponding author</footnote>
In the last decade there has been a notable shift in the scope of technical cooperation activities. DFIs increasingly recognise the importance of informal public transport (IPT) in urban mobility systems in the region (see, for example, Haas 2022), and are gradually expanding the scope of technical cooperation and financed projects in the public transport sector to include the IPT industry. The focus areas of such work include fleet renewal programmes and integration with other existing and new public transport services.

Codatu, an NGO based in France, has managed the preparation stages for several such technical cooperation agreements in the region that incorporate IPT improvement in their scope. This has included a cooperation agreement involving all major cities in Madagascar with funding from AFD and the Malagasy government, as well as FEXTE agreements with Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya and Angola. The latter was signed in 2022. In it, AFD, Codatu and the Angolan Transport Ministry (MinTrans) agreed on a three-year programme to support urban transport improvement in Angola. The initial focus was set on the greater Luanda urban area, which includes the city centre in the Luanda municipality and extends across many of the other eight municipalities in the Province of Luanda (see Figure 1).

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Greater Luanda urban area (shaded in white) in Luanda Province (bordered in red)</figcaption></figure>

(Source: Google Maps, 2024)
In 2002 Angola emerged from a civil war that started soon after the country declared independence from Portugal in 1975. In the years after the war ended the country's economy has been rebuilt funded in large part by its petroleum reserves. While the proceeds of oil exports have been used to rebuild some of the country's infrastructure, much of the effects have been concentrated in Luanda, where it has been argued that the state and economic elite have pursued visions of a consumerist "world class city" ignorant of widespread poverty (Davis et al, 2019; Croese, 2021).

The economy's resurgence has seen Luanda's population grow rapidly – less so in terms of the new elite, massively so for the city and country's poor, who arrive in the city seeking employment. The city's population is projected to grow from the current 10 million to reach 12.9 million by 2030 – with the latter figure double that of 2014 (Costa et al, 2023; Government of Angola, 2019). In the absence of an economy diversified away from petroleum, the majority of people in Southern Africa's new megacity will remain in a precarious position and subject to international forces.

Encouraged by the International Monetary Fund, the Angolan government committed to withdrawing its retail fuel price subsidy between 2023 and 2025. As a result, the fuel price doubled in June 2023, while after the most recent adjustment in April 2024 the diesel price increased again, from €0.14/L to €0.20/L. At the same time, exemptions that operators of informal public transport (IPT) had from the subsidy withdrawals were removed, leading to social unrest. (Deutsche Welle, 2024; Gomes, 2024)

IPT is crucial to the functioning of Luanda. Since this industry does not receive other forms of financial support from the government, the fuel subsidy and exemption removals are highly problematic not only for these operators' businesses, but also for the many passengers that use their services. Aside from this context-specific issue, IPT in Luanda also shares many of the issues found in this industry in other cities and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as poor working conditions, insufficient investment in facilities and fleets, and competition for and in the market (see, for example, Behrens et al, 2016 and Durant et al, 2023). This situation motivates for actions that can improve their businesses and integrate them into the broader urban mobility system in the city, as well as in terms of building the capacity of government officials to plan for and implement these actions under the umbrella of technical cooperation and in partnership with the IPT industry.

Against this background, in this paper we report on the current IPT and broader public transport situation in Luanda, on the activities that comprise the technical cooperation, and on structured engagements with stakeholders in government and in the IPT industry on how they aim to address IPT improvement and integration gaps and challenges. Ultimately, the paper aims to identify potential pathways for IPT improvement and integration for Luanda going forward, comment on roles that technical cooperation might play in realising this path, and contribute to the limited research literature on urban mobility in Angola.

## 2. Materials and methods

As a first method step, the aims of the paper stated above were rephrased as the following research questions:
1. What is the current situation of the IPT industry in Luanda in terms of organisation, operations and finances?

2. What are the key issues in the IPT industry and its operations from the points of view of the industry and of government?

3. What is the current government position in terms of improving IPT and integrating it in a multi-modal mobility system in Luanda?

4. What is the potential future state and roles of IPT in greater Luanda, and what does this mean in terms of capacity to plan and implement in the IPT industry and in government?

5. What role has international technical cooperation played to date in terms of IPT improvement and the related capacities in government and in the industry?

6. What potential contributions can international technical cooperation make in achieving the desired future state for IPT?

Two research methods were employed to respond to the research questions. The first was a literature review. In the first part of this review we focussed on Codatu's unpublished internal reports on the technical cooperation in Angola, which included meeting notes taken during field and technical visits of which the authors were part. The second body of literature that was sourced and reviewed was documents published in the last decade in English and Portuguese in the public domain on the topic of IPT and public transport in Angola and Luanda. The surfaced literature was limited but diverse, including national and metropolitan masterplans, passenger transport regulations, conference presentations, academic articles and project reports.

The second research method employed was semi-structured interviews. On the part of the government, we targeted officials who had been involved or consulted in the technical cooperation, and then asked them to assist with identifying respondents in the IPT sector. We aimed to conduct eight interviews in May and June 2024, at least to include respondents from MinTrans, the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT, the agency within MinTrans that was the effective Angolan counterpart in the cooperation), the Luanda province, and two IPT cooperatives or associations.

Ultimately we were able to conduct five interviews in the course of June. Three respondents were from different sections of ANTT (enumerated in Section 4 as R1, R2 and R3), of which one had previously been at a local municipality in Luanda (R3), while a fourth respondent (R4) was previously at ANTT and had moved to another mobility-related role in government. Only one respondent from the IPT industry agreed to be interviewed (R5), from a cooperative representing both minibus and motorcycle taxi operators and also playing a coordinating role in a union of IPT collectives.

The interviews were all conducted in-person in Luanda and in Portuguese, with audio recordings and written notes of key points taken during the interviews. The audio recordings were transcribed afterwards. The reviewed literature and interview data were then analysed thematically according to the topics of the research questions. These findings are presented and discussed in Section 4 of this paper.
**3. Theory**

In this section we discuss the theoretical foundation of the research reported on in this paper.
Firstly, we describe approaches to IPT improvement and integration in Sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA). We then turn to processes or activities in international technical cooperation in the
urban public transport sector that can be observed in SSA. Lastly, we focus on capacity
building in the urban public transport sector the region.

**3.1 Approaches to IPT improvement and integration Sub-Saharan Africa**

The circulation of public transport technology models, under broader urban mobility policy processes, is common in the transport sector. In cities of the global South, the adoption of exogenous public transport technology models often results from the absence of local expertise, the influence of international actors, or the ambition to assert a "world class city" position in a globalised world. Some of these models and policies have become particularly popular over the past decades, such as bus rapid transit, exported from Latin America towards Asia and Africa, and whose landing in Sub-Saharan Africa has been well documented (Rizzo, 2014; Wood, 2015; Baffi, 2024). At a more limited scale, light rail transit can also now be found in some African cities (Rabat, Casablanca and Addis Ababa, for instance), as well as metropolitan/regional heavy rail (Gauteng, Abidjan, Dakar), though these technologies are less common due to their high implementation costs (Venter et al., 2020).

Despite the intensity of policy mobility in the transport sector in cities of the global South, it is
notable that none of these models directly consider IPT, even though IPT provides for most
motorised trips in most of these cities. While academic literature has been documenting IPT
for some decades already (Cervero, 2000; Godard, 2004; Behrens et al., 2016), stakeholders
such as DFIs, international experts and consultancy firms only recently evolved from a
"displace and replace" towards a "embrace, engage, improve and integrate" paradigm
(Schalekamp & Kropp, 2018). As a result, over the past years, several reports and
methodological tools have been published (by SSATP, and the MYC Toolkit, for example).
Advocacy regarding the role of IPT in urban mobility systems has also intensified as its
resilience – e.g. to the introduction of mass-rapid transit services, or during the Covid-19
pandemic – and its central role in urban mobility systems, with no direct cost for local
authorities, became unquestionable.

Beyond advocacy, projects and programmes have been implemented to improve the IPT
industry, with the objective of mitigating its negative externalities and foster its assets. Four
main approaches can be identified in this respect, which cannot strictly be considered as
public transport technology models, but rather as references and good practices from and for
cities of the global South. The first group of measures consider the necessity to modernise
the IPT industry, mostly by introducing new vehicles through fleet renewal programmes, such
as it was implemented, for instance, in Dakar (SSATP, 2022). The production of official
documentation acknowledging and framing the activities of the industry as well as specific
regulation to delineate their activities is another set of measures. Professionalisation is a
third component of reforms and activities developed to improve IPT. This encompasses the
training of owners, operators and possibly also of the staff working for professional
organisations if the latter exists. The objective here is twofold: legitimising the know-how and experience of the IPT operators, and supporting the development and consolidation of their capacities to improve operations and user experience. Integration is a last approach, which often remains difficult to implement as it requires the local authorities to define the functions of its transport service and the means to coordinate the various transport services.

Even though the programmes dealing with IPT are still relatively few and limited in their scope, it is important to emphasise the great adaptability and openness to innovation that characterise IPT services. This is tangible when considering the recent developments of technological innovations such vehicle electrification, and in particular retrofitting minibuses as has been done at an experimental scale in South Africa (NASAC IAP, 2024). Digital tools also provide relevant levers to improve the industry, be it with regards to payment and ticketing system, the optimisation of fleet operations, or the collection of data in the sector. Some institutional innovations also emerge, such as the creation of transport operating companies in Cape Town.

## 3.2 Processes/activities in international technical cooperation in urban public transport in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the field of development aid, technical cooperation is a tool commonly used to facilitate the transfer of expertise from one partner to another, with the underlying goal to support the beneficiary of the expertise to build on local capacity and assert its legitimacy on a specific topic. The notion of policy transfer is strongly associated with the implementation of technical cooperation. This has to be viewed in perspective, firstly in terms of the globalisation of the economy and commonalities between cities and countries with respect to the challenges they face and the means they can leverage to address such challenges (Dolowitz and March, 2000). Secondly, in the specific context of cooperation financed by DFIs, such projects represent a "soft" way to introduce standards and norms on the part of the beneficiary, as a prerequisite to obtain a loan (Robert at al., 2019).

In relation to technical cooperation coordinated by Codatu – which is mainly funded by AFD – policy transfer is implemented through the sharing of “references” and good practices from other cities, both from the global North and the global South (Robert et al., 2019). This exogenous expertise is convened through: i) the mobilisation of international experts to provide technical support to the beneficiary entity; ii) peer-to-peer discussions organised by Codatu between cities of the global South and global North, or between cities of the global South; and iii) through organising and accompanying study tours in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

Through these activities, Codatu's ambition is firstly to provide bespoke content for partners of the global South, who often find relatable situations and relevant feedback in other cities of the global South, rather than to promote any global urban public transport system or technological model. Secondly, through organising bilateral discussions and peer-to-peer exchanges, participants are taken out of their day-to-day workplace, with the intention to gain distance from – and new perspectives on – the issues and challenges that they face in that local situation. This is even more so the case for IPT projects and issues: South-South discussions and feedback enable gathering technical feedback and facilitate the emergence
of locally adapted solutions, rather than the transfer from generic international models of
change, which often tend to exclude IPT. In this process, the identification of relevant peers
to share feedback and expertise, as well as the possibility to decipher a foreign context and
understand the underlying challenges and ambitions of the stakeholders, are at the core of
what Codatu offers.

While the impact of such activities is often difficult to identify or evaluate, as it mostly relates to “soft skills” or “soft knowledge”, tangible outcomes can still be observed. For instance, the opportunity to see and discuss projects already implemented by other institutions in the global South might spur a mindset shift among decision-makers, experts and practitioners, who often are cautious if not antagonistic towards the IPT industry (UITP, 2024). In this sector, as there is no widespread or widely accepted model of change, proof-by-example makes a strong case in terms of the feasibility of any particular IPT reform. Depending on the approach taken by the beneficiary, such references provide input on specific aspects of IPT improvement that they may want to implement. As an example, the financing mechanism used in Dakar to enable the fleet renewal of IPT minibuses (“Cars Rapides”) has become an international reference due to the programme’s efficiency and structural rigour when viewed over the long term.

3.3 Capacity building in the urban public transport sector in Sub-Saharan Africa

Beyond the capacity to provide technical content within a cooperation and to share expertise with the beneficiary, an important challenge for the partners (the beneficiary, the financing institution and the operating partner, Codatu) remains the capacity to build on the cooperation's result in the long run. If successful, these projects are likely to create momentum on the part of the beneficiary by fostering internal brainstorming and planning. However, it is often difficult to sustain this situation once the cooperation draws to a close and the foreign expertise is sent off. Thus, to perpetuate learning from the cooperation and ensure its sustainability, capacity building is a key component. By training part of the staff in the beneficiary entities it becomes easier to share the results of the cooperation, and to ensure their operationalisation and implementation. Moreover, in countries where there is often a scarcity of training and capacity-building programmes in public transport and urban mobility, implementing such activities enables the strengthening of the beneficiary's internal capacity and the creation of a local pool of experts in the field of public transport and urban mobility.

It is crucial to emphasise the need for developing a local ecosystem of actors in the urban mobility sector in order to foster innovation and develop local solutions. Although the use of development aid and international expertise might serve as resources, the sustainability of implemented activities and projects rely on the capacity of local stakeholders to carry them out, and to generate appropriate and relevant projects. Through the feedback organised with stakeholders from various cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, beneficiaries have commented favourably on the value of interaction between local authorities, transport operators, consultancy firms, vehicle manufacturers and university research centres, amongst other stakeholders, to provide information and share data, challenge one another, stimulate exchanges and discussions and thus spur innovation. Of course, this cannot be considered as an outcome only of development aid and technical cooperation, but also of activities and
partnerships that are purposely set up to contribute to the emergence of such an ecosystem of stakeholders.

## 4. Results and discussion

The presentation and discussion of results in this section responds to the research questions put forward in Section 3, and draws on the data collected through the application of the research methods discussed in that section.

Firstly, the aims and process of Codatu's technical cooperation with the government of Angola and supported by AFD is set out as overarching context. This is followed by a discussion of the current IPT situation in Luanda, key issues with this industry, and government's position on it (Questions 1, 2 and 3, respectively). The potential future state and role of the IPT industry is then considered from the government's point of view, as well as the capacity implications for government and this industry (Questions 4). Impacts of Codatu's technical cooperation in terms of IPT improvement and related industry and government capacity is then discussed, as well as how such cooperation might contribute to achieving the desired future state for the IPT industry in Luanda (Questions 5 and 6).

### 4.1 Overview of Codatu's technical cooperation in Angola

In May 2022 Codatu, AFD and the Angolan government signed a FEXTE technical cooperation agreement with the title *Supporting MinTrans's Urban Transport Policy*. The cooperation agreement had two components. The first component, led by Codatu, was to undertake initial studies and facilitate the exchange of experiences between the Angolan partner and Codatu's international professional network through workshops, study tours and field missions with Codatu experts. This component had a three-year timeline ending in 2025, during which a Codatu-appointed coordination officer was present on site from early 2023 until mid-2024. For the second component of the FEXTE, Codatu had a more limited role, supporting AFD and MinTrans to scope specific, detailed studies that would be financed and implemented.

Besides the on-site coordinator and the project manager based at Codatu's offices in France, Codatu also contracted a senior consultant to provide strategic input and support to the cooperation, facilitate missions, workshops and studies, and prepare terms of reference for identified detailed studies. A volunteer expert in Codatu's network furthermore shadowed the cooperation, advising on relevant topic areas and participating in meetings, missions and study visits on an ad hoc basis.

The priority areas tackled in the cooperation were: i) bolstering the operations of the state-owned scheduled bus company, TCUL (the Luanda Urban Public Transport Company); ii) improve the management and the operations of CFL (the Luanda Railways Company) in charge of the rail line from the city centre along a major movement corridor towards a new special economic zone to the city's southeast and beyond to a new airport outside the provincial border; and iii) advising on the government's initial actions and future intention to restructure the IPT industry.
Besides regular online meetings between the partners and invited experts, Codatu organised five expert missions to Luanda. The first, in November 2022, was aimed at assessing the urban mobility system overall, as well as a specific focus on TCUL. The second mission, in March 2023, centred on the bus sector – again including TCUL, but this time also the private sector bus companies operating in the city. The next mission took place in April 2023, with IPT as the focus area. The fourth mission was in November 2023, during which Codatu arranged a workshop with multiple government agencies, including those outside the transport sector. The final mission was undertaken in April 2024, focussing on ENBI (the National Integrated Ticketing Company), and in which a fare system expert participated to evaluate and report on ENBI upon the Transport Minister's request.

Codatu furthermore facilitated the attendance of a small Angolan delegation at the international Codatu-Climate Chance conference in Dakar in October 2022. At this event they made connections with counterparts in Mozambique and subsequently undertook a technical visit the next month to engage local stakeholders in Maputo on ongoing work supported by the World Bank to restructure IPT as part of a BRT project in this city. In March 2024, Codatu organised a week of technical and political engagements in Paris and Lyon between AFD and other French state and private sector mobility actors for a large Angolan delegation. The latter included representatives not only from the national and Luanda governments, but also from the Huila and Benguela provincial governments and from the IPT sector. Most recently, Codatu's senior consultant presented at MinTrans's Consultative Council on Urban Mobility and Transport held in June 2024 in Benguela, the country's second largest city and capital of the province with the same name.

## 4.2 The current IPT situation in Luanda

The public transport offer in Luanda comprises conventional buses, amongst which are state-owned TCUL, eight private bus operators, and IPT. IPT services are locally known as "transporte ocasional" - since industry's origins in the late 1980s and early 1990s (R3) it has always been the owner or the driver who decides when to operate and thus passengers only have transport occasionally. From that time a bouquet of different IPT services have developed, which presently include:

* 15-seater blue-and-white minibuses, colloquially known as "candongueiros" or "taxis," and their owners known as "taxistas";

* 5-seater share-taxis, or "gira-bairros" (roughly translating as neighbourhood circulators, similar to "amaphela" in South Africa);

* pickup trucks carrying multiple passengers in their open load-bays (similar to Mozambique's "My-Loves"); and

* "kupapatas," which are motorcycles that have been modified with load-boxes and a two-wheeled axle added at the back, and to some extent purpose-built three-wheelers factory-fitted load-boxes.

These services are complemented by, or compete with, conventional 5-seater taxis, which can be hailed through a variety of smartphone applications, and motorcycle-taxis. (R2; Costa et al, 2023)
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: Candongueiros at a makeshift boarding facility located on a service road</figcaption></figure>

(Source: Schalekamp, 2023)

Though transport data in general is limited and not systematically collected, minibuses were reported to be the dominant mode of passenger transport, providing "more than 60% of mobility in the city" (R1). In terms of public transport fleet sizes, there are estimated to be just under 10,000 blue-and-white licensed minibuses in Luanda, compared to approximately 400 buses across all nine bus operators (R1; Costa et al, 2023). The prevalence of minibuses was due to their being more reliable and available and thus more popular with passenger, even if their fares were at least a third more expensive than those of buses – and especially TCUL's buses whose fares are capped and subsidised by the government (R2; R4; internal meeting notes). Overall, ANTT estimates that the total number of IPT vehicles in Luanda is between 25,000 and 30,000, which includes the above-mentioned licensed minibuses and the evidently greater number of unlicensed IPT vehicles (R1).

There is a degree of complementarity between minibuses and share-taxis. The former largely remains on major urban roads which tend to be paved and relatively well-maintained (see Figure 3). Share-taxis provide a collector-distributor function at a neighbourhood level (as hinted at by their local name), where roads are mostly unpaved and poorly maintained and not always accessible to minibuses. Their operating away from major thoroughfares also makes it difficult to estimate how many of them there are. (R3)

In terms of industry structure, key actors include vehicle owners, drivers, on-board conductors, and on-street touts or marshals. While there is little detailed data about owners or vehicle acquisition practices, it appears that each owner has several minibuses – some up to 50 – obtained through a continuous cycle of using profit from one minibus to purchase another (R1; internal meeting notes). The owner-driver relationship, in turn, follows the target system (see Behrens et al, 2016), usually on the basis of a verbal agreement. However, there are variations on this: some drivers may keep all passenger revenue generated on Saturdays or Sundays, while others may do so for the whole weekend. Practices also differ in whether it is the owner or the driver who is responsible for costs such as accident damage or traffic fines (R1; R3). Drivers appoint and pay conductors from their share of the revenue,
though not all appoint such on-board staff; the conductor in turn pays the marshal for each vehicle which the marshal assists in filling (R1; R4; Jose, 2020).

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: Map of minibus routes in Luanda</figcaption></figure>

(Source: GeoOneTop with Associação ANATA, 2017)

At a collective organisation level there are seven cooperatives and three associations active in the IPT sector, as well as a union of which they are form part that serves as a joint platform for engagement with government. Associations have a not-for-profit character, for instance spreading awareness of new regulations amongst workers or assisting them with licensing matters, while cooperatives are intended to be businesses and pursue profit-generating activities on behalf of all of their members. However, the role of cooperatives is not well developed yet, with R3 noting that they are "still maturing ... and we need to understand their internal structure to see where we can work with them." (R1; R3; internal meeting notes).

Membership of these organisations tends to be national rather than only drawn from Luanda or are clustered along particular routes. They furthermore represent predominantly workers, while also serving one or more of the different IPT services. There is only limited participation from owners in these organisations. ANTT reported this as being a persistent issue preventing effective interaction with this important stakeholder holder group within the IPT industry. (R2; internal meeting notes)
4.3 Key issues in the IPT industry and government's current position and future aims to address them

The key issues reported across all of the interviews can be clustered around either organisational or infrastructural matters. In practice the IPT industry works not as one collective but rather as individual businesses outside the cooperatives. In these individual structures there is a general lack of training or capacity to run businesses and operate vehicles professionally (R2), manifesting in a lack of accountability between owners and drivers, and poor working conditions. Passengers also suffer from this, as drivers cut trips short to maximise their income in the face of high daily target amounts (R5).

The publication of the Regulation of Regular Road Transport presidential decree, in 2019, shifted transport planning and monitoring responsibility to provincial and municipal levels of government, and made allowance for operating licensing of IPT services (MinTrans 2020). However, there is a lack of capacity at these government levels to undertake these tasks (R3). Thus, overall, there is an absence of effective channels of communication between IPT stakeholders, from passengers through to central government, and thus to identify and deal with issues in this industry.

The quality of service rendered to passengers is also impacted directly by the current urban infrastructure. A lack of proper boarding facilities (even at major demand points such as that illustrated in Figure 2) was noted as a major problem. This undermines service efficiency and passenger comfort. The absence of paved roads beyond main routes has led to local areas largely being served by share-taxis and mototaxis, which either force a passenger transfer to a minibus on longer trips (and thus having to pay another fare), or have led to these smaller vehicles continuing their journeys onto the main routes where they compete with the larger minibuses (R4, R5).

The absence of street lighting along all roads was noted as a particular concern that impacts on passenger safety – and general road safety (R5). The transport decentralisation decree of 2019 also attributed responsibility for operating licensing to provinces and municipalities. On both the part of the government and of operators, it was noted that operators might rightly ask why they should pay operating license fees if the government is not providing them with the infrastructure on which to operate (R4, R5).

Concurrent to the 2019 regulation decree, a complementary presidential decree on the Bases for the Concession of Regular Urban Passenger Road Transport Services, was published. Its main objectives were to support the further development of scheduled urban public transport in Angola, and to encourage more operators to enter this market. In the discussion of these decrees, MinTrans (2020) notes, with particular reference to Luanda, that the transition to this regime should be used to halt the increase in the number of IPT vehicles, if on condition that scheduled public transport be drastically improved. In addition, regulations on where IPT can operate should be developed over time, with an emphasis on a future role as last mile or feeder services to the future urban bus network, serving lower demand areas or where the road network is unsuitable for buses. This completes a process of government defining a role for IPT that started in 2010, prior to which there was no legislation or regulation governing this sector (R2).
In the interviews, a clear message emerged that IPT has played and continues to play a
crucial part in urban mobility. In the words of R2, "the scheduled system doesn't provide an
answer, so they [IPT] end up being the answer for many municipalities." IPT's current role is
clearly some distance removed from the national government view that IPT should shift from
its current dominant role, delivered through a diverse service offer, to playing only a feeder
role to a future scheduled public transport system. The General Metropolitan Masterplan for
Luanda, published by presidential decree in 2015, does, however, put forward a more refined
process for the reorganisation of IPT and its integration in the city's transport system. This
process would comprise the following set of actions taking place over different timeframes
(as summarised and annotated by José, 2024):

* Assist the IPT industry in order to renew its fleet, especially by switching to more environmentally friendly vehicles (future action)

* Ensure that minibuses are licensed, serviced and registered within the metropolitan area (immediate-term action with a view to the future)

* Create a pilot project and expand the incorporation of IPT into a fare system integrated with scheduled public transport (future action)

* Reorganise IPT routes, so that this service is operated according to a structured zoning of the city (immediate-term action with a view to the future)

* Provide safe, secure and accessible facilities for IPT users (passengers and drivers), such as shelters, platforms and waiting areas (immediate-term action with a view to the future)

* Encourage operators to continue to join forces in order to create more cohesive and comprehensive services (immediate-term action with a view to the future)

* Prioritise the improvement of minibuses along the main routes in order to minimise conflicts with planned mass transport (immediate-term action with a view to the future)

That this list of actions initially developed in 2015 was reiterated at a MinTrans meeting in
2024 suggests that it may still have currency despite preceding the 2019 decrees. However,
operators may well remain resistant to change, even in view of such proposals to work with
rather than replace them. In a cooperation meeting in April 2023 with representatives from
several of the IPT cooperatives and associations, they aired three pertinent points: i) the IPT
industry is weary of hearing proposals – they want action; ii) the industry holds the upper
hand politically, and thus the onus is on government to create proposals sufficiently attractive
if it wants the industry to change; and iii) in their view, government fundamentally lacks a
vision for the industry.

None of the interviews or reviewed documents revealed any thinking about a change process
or the allocation of the resources that such a process would require. It thus remains unclear
how any proposed plans for the IPT industry will move to the action that IPT stakeholders
said they wanted to see.
## 4.4 Impacts of Codatu's technical cooperation on IPT improvement and related capacity

Despite the apparent absence of a change process plan for IPT improvement on the part of the government, the cooperation did give respondents in government space for reflection on their current situation and potential ways forward:

> Look, we've had a few working sessions with Codatu that have really shown us that it's possible to organise [the IPT] sector – it takes time, but we can organise it. And here I think we need to keep working to implement a model that is applicable to move forward faster. The organisation of [IPT], and I think that's what's missing at the moment, we've already been given documents, initiatives, but we need to complete the process to define what model we need to draw up. (R2)

Two of the other respondents in government also indicated that they appreciated being exposed through the cooperation to such models. In the context of the interviews, the term “model” here refers both to the mass public transport technology models (discussed in Section 3) and to models of IPT business improvement and service integration that were presented in meetings and events organised through the cooperation. With reference to one of the sessions during the IPT-focussed mission, R2 commented that “[Codatu’s expert] shared examples from other realities, I think it was South Africa, and I think they are also applicable to our reality, with a few adjustments.”

Nonetheless, the motivation and capacity in government to adapt such models to be relevant to the situation in Luanda, design the change process, and then implement the change, appears to be elusive:

> We haven't yet done any local work to see what impact the cooperation has had, no tangible work, but we have the experiences [of what has been attempted elsewhere] and based on these experiences we were starting these processes to formalise the [change process]. And it's possible that once we've internally designed the whole strategy, we can ask for help from the cooperation to support us in implementing the path we're mapping out. (R1)

The IPT industry, equally, seems to be waiting for outside intervention to address the challenges that it faces: “All this has to do with structuring power, governance, drawing up new decrees... We've already handed over everything we have to the provincial government, plans for improvement...” (R5).

These findings ultimately suggest that there is local capacity to conceptualise improvements, in government to undertake planning and develop regulations, and in the IPT industry to formulate its own plans. However, these parties all seem to be waiting for exogenous intervention and have not yet considered that it would be up to them, jointly, to actually engage one another in the long run to make change a reality. To that end, the Codatu cooperation has provided space for exchanges within and between these parties around what form such change may take, and made available external expertise to boost capacity for the duration of the cooperation. However, for IPT improvement to be realisable and
realised, and for capacity to develop in the long run, government and the industry will have to
move well beyond asking, "weren't we waiting for the final steps [from Codatu]?" (R4). In
short, the technical cooperation has enabled local stakeholders to find out about IPT reform
initiatives that have been carried out elsewhere and to envisage actions for their local
situation, although no concrete action or improvement has yet been implemented in Luanda.

The institutional players with which Codatu engaged presented IPT as an area to work on within the framework of the technical cooperation. However, once the diagnosis of the IPT situation had been carried out through Codatu's involvement, ANTT did not go further to define an action plan and were unable to provide Codatu with input. This is not because of a reluctance on ANTT's part, but rather because IPT as a subject relegated to the background as ANTT staff are constantly being directed to prioritise others topic areas by the Transport Minister or even the President – one example being that technical staff were called away to assist in preparations for the inauguration of Luanda's new airport. It thus appears there is a lack of political will to make IPT a priority for the various teams in the Transport Ministry, without which the development of effective policies and initiatives to reform the IPT sector would not be possible.

Lastly, exchanges with the IPT cooperatives and associations through the technical cooperation were beneficial in terms of gaining a better understanding of how IPT operated and to provide a channel through which to share experiences of reform in other African cities with them. However, as noted above, they had grown weary of participating in these exchanges and discussions without seeing any concrete initiatives on the part of the authorities. Were such exchanges to continue, they would have to include tangible intermediate actions (such as workshops, training, and information materials, etc.) in parallel to designing the change process that will be put in place in the medium to long term.

**5. Conclusions**

A subject that only received passing attention in the cooperation and in the data collected for this paper was the shortage of higher education and training institutions in the mobility and transport field in Angola. Research and teaching, which underpin the development of professionals and a body of knowledge in this field, must for the most part be accessed abroad. Angola is further isolated by being bordered by countries in which Portuguese is not spoken, and notably so from the anchor of the regional financial and knowledge economies, South Africa. This places extra emphasis on the importance of time-limited technical cooperation such as that managed by Codatu. Capacity building is a long-term undertaking, and while such cooperation cannot create or support all the needed capacity in the long run, it can in the very least mobilise experts and create awareness among local partners of what they do not know. The cooperation appears to have succeeded in doing this.

There nonetheless remain substantial gaps in the process toward improving and integrating
IPT. The paucity of data on ownership, labour and operations in the industry must be
addressed, as must the absence of a public sector strategic position for the industry, and the
accompanying process design to achieve change. Government and the IPT industry will have
to act in a concerted and cooperative manner to plan, initiate and implement change,
drawing from their learning through the cooperation's activities.
In support of such an outcome, the technical cooperation has led to a better understanding of the IPT sector and to the sharing of initiatives to reform the IPT sector that have been put in place in other African cities. However, local IPT stakeholders now want to see change: operators certainly do, as do technical staff in the government. An important next step would be to convince the political leadership in government to support this change, and to support their officials not only to make the most of the opportunities afforded by technical cooperation and further learning but also to design and implement an appropriate IPT change process.

The technical cooperation has also contributed to building a relationship of trust between the institutional players and those in the IPT sector. To do this, it was necessary to establish and maintain the link between these stakeholders, to show a willingness to improve the situation by considering their challenges and needs, and to work with them to identify the actions to be taken. From here on it will be important to go out into the field, and to carry out this work as a shared, collaborative effort.

Instruments such as the FEXTE under which the cooperation was undertaken, are entered into at the behest of the beneficiary government. The political will of key decision-makers in Angola was mobilised once to initiate the cooperation on which we reported in this paper. It can and should be mobilised again – to make the most of the collaborative learning and exchange foundation that has been laid, but also to change IPT for the better in Luanda.
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