Informal settlements are projected to host future increases in Africa’s urban population growth. This has led to calls within African urban scholarship and practice for a capable and enabled urban planning response that promotes inclusive and sustainable principles in urban planning and management. Tracing the scholarship on Angola, this chapter reviews the literature on the consolidation of informal settlements in Luanda to shed insights into this intractable challenge of urban planning and its socio-political and historical dimensions to foreground the imperative to reimagine the urban planning regime. It highlights post-colonial planning ambivalence, a centralised, and project-oriented urban planning approach to the challenge of informal settlements. The chapter submits that reimagining urban planning in Luanda, and African cities in general, demands a forward-looking planning praxis that de-centres urban planning from state control and builds local institutional capacity to integrate social equity, local participation, empowerment and experimentation within a pro-poor urban planning framework.

Chapter 2 introduces the kingdom of Ndongo and focuses on its relationship to Kongo in terms of political and social structures. It looks at the election of Philipe Hari I to the throne of Pungo-Andongo, examining his rivalry with and family ties to Queen Njinga, and how the Portuguese used his election to foster trade relationships in Angola by introducing the baculamento tax system. The chapter then explores the role of João Hari II (Dom João de Sousa), also known as Ngola Aiidi, the son who succeeded Hari I, and the ideology of Francisco de Távora ‘Cajanda’, the Portuguese governor of Luanda at the time. It investigates the destruction of Pungo-Andongo and the sending of the kingdom’s princes and princesses, Queen Njinga’s nephews and nieces, to Brazil. The chapter is concerned with exploring the political environment of Angola and the wider region as the backdrop to Mendonça’s debate on freedom and enslaved Africans in the Atlantic region.

Relates the Jaga invasion of Kongo, the entry of Portugal into West Central Africa, and Portugal’s war with Ndongo