About 36 percent of the population of São Tomé and Príncipe lives below the poverty line.  About 74 percent of the country’s population  are concentrated in urban areas that are characterized by unplanned peripheral neighbourhoods with insufficient infrastructures, where the lowest-income population lives. The low-income housing panorama is dominated by precarious dwellings, mainly built of wood (from the deforestation of native forests), that lack basic sanitation and are often inhabited by more than one family. 

Provision of decent housing for this segment of the population is a challenge for national authorities, especially considering that the country lacked dedicated financing mechanisms and specific legislation for the development and implementation of housing programmes and projects, particularly for social housing. In addition, conventional building materials (such as cement bricks, pipes and paint) and construction tools and equipment are not produced locally and must be imported at high costs. This constitutes an additional burden for the vulnerable economy of this small island developing state.

The Support to the Urban Development of São Tomé and Príncipe project was implemented by Caixa Econômica Federal (CAIXA), São Tomé and Príncipe’s Ministry of Public Works, Infrastructure, Transport and Communications and São Tomé and Príncipe’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and supported by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC). It was based on the know-how of CAIXA, a Brazilian state-owned financial services company with extensive experience in the fields of urban development, housing and management of social programmes. This South-South cooperation initiative aimed at enhancing the São Tomé and Príncipe public administration in the area of housing instruments and policies. 

The project focused on three complementary components. The first component, capacity building in the structuring and management of social-development funds, supported the national government to establish a social-development fund for the provision of social housing in the country. This component mainly comprised the joint drafting of a proposed law for the creation of a national system of controlled-cost housing and the technical training of the government agents involved in the housing sector. 

The territorial planning component of the project sought to transfer knowledge on urban planning to support the government of São Tomé and Príncipe to structure a policy in this area. It included the drafting of a basic-law proposal on territorial- and urban-planning policy and the formulation of a decree-law proposal laying the basis for the Urban-Expansion Plan of the city of São Tomé (Northern Sector, between Gongá, Santo Amaro and the airport) as well as for expansion plans of the district capitals and the capital of the Autonomous Region of Príncipe. In particular, the project contributed to institutionalization of the concerned policy-implementation body, the Directorate of Territorial Planning and Urban Development, through capacity-building activities and the acquisition of software and equipment. 

The third component, housing policy and non-conventional construction methodologies, transferred knowledge to the technical staff of the São Tomé and Príncipe government on the use of non-conventional construction methodologies applicable to the country’s reality, aiming to optimize the local construction standard. The intention was to streamline the use of equipment with high operational costs and of materials from native forests, reducing the environmental impacts of extraction. Dissemination of a soil-cement construction technique was applied in the construction of two model residential units. This component also resulted in the preparation of a draft housing legislation for Sao Tome and Principe together with its implementation strategy.