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OVERLAPPING IMPERIALISMS: COLONIAL AND NEOCOLONIAL LOGICS OF
URBAN GOVERNANCE IN KILAMBA, ANGOLA
KYERI KIM
kyeri_kim@hufs.ac.kr
Anthropologist and research professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul (Republic
of Korea), specializing in Lusophone and African area studies. Her work engages anthropological
perspectives on social and cultural phenomena across Lusophone and African contexts.
Abstract
This article examines the urban project of Kilamba in Luanda, Angola, as a site where distinct
imperial logics operate through development finance and urban governance. Rather than
treating Portuguese colonial rule and China’s contemporary engagement as separate historical
phases, the study conceptualizes them as mutually reinforcing regimes of power coexisting
within a single urban space. To capture this configuration, it advances the concept of
“overlapping imperialisms,” defined as a condition in which imperial forms of governance with
distinct historical origins become institutionalized within the same national or urban context
and produce layered effects of inclusion and exclusion. By situating urban space at the
intersection of colonial governance and contemporary development finance, particularly oil-
backed credit, this article contributes to debates in international relations on postcolonial
governance, South–South cooperation, and the spatialization of global power. It argues that
development-led urbanization can function as a mechanism through which imperial forms of
governance persist and are reconfigured in postcolonial contexts.
Keywords
Overlapping imperialisms, colonial governance, China–Africa relations, oil-backed credit,
urban space and power.
Resumo
Este artigo analisa o projeto urbano de Kilamba, em Luanda, Angola, como um local onde
distintas lógicas imperiais operam através do financiamento ao desenvolvimento e da
governação urbana. Em vez de tratar o domínio colonial português e o envolvimento
contemporâneo da China como fases históricas separadas, o estudo conceitua-os como
regimes de poder que se reforçam mutuamente e coexistem num único espaço urbano. Para
captar esta configuração, o estudo propõe o conceito de «imperialismos sobrepostos»,
definido como uma condição em que formas imperiais de governação com origens históricas
distintas se institucionalizam no mesmo contexto nacional ou urbano e produzem efeitos em
camadas de inclusão e exclusão. Ao situar o espaço urbano na intersecção entre a governação
colonial e o financiamento do desenvolvimento contemporâneo, em particular o crédito
garantido pelo petróleo, este artigo contribui para os debates nas relações internacionais
sobre a governação pós-colonial, a cooperação Sul-Sul e a espacialização do poder global.
Defende que a urbanização impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento pode funcionar como um
mecanismo através do qual as formas imperiais de governação persistem e são reconfiguradas
em contextos pós-coloniais.
JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
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Thematic Dossier – Geopolitics of Anxiety: Ideology, Identity, and (Un)Bordering in
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September 2026, pp. 132-154
Overlapping Imperialisms: Colonial and Neocolonial Logics of Urban
Governance in Kilamba, Angola
Kyeri Kim
133
Palavras-chave
Overlapping imperialisms, colonial governance, China–Africa relations, oil-backed credit,
urban space and power.
How to cite this article
Kim, Kyeri (2026). Overlapping Imperialisms: Colonial and Neocolonial Logics of Urban Governance
in Kilamba, Angola. Janus.net, e-journal of international relations. Thematic Dossier – Geopolitics
of Anxiety: Ideology, Identity, and (Un)Bordering in Contemporary Europe and Asia, VOL. 17 Nº.
1, TD3, September 2026, pp. 132-154. DOI https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.DT0626.8
Article submitted on December 31, 2025 and accepted on February 6, 2026.
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Thematic Dossier – Geopolitics of Anxiety: Ideology, Identity, and (Un)Bordering in
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Overlapping Imperialisms: Colonial and Neocolonial Logics of Urban
Governance in Kilamba, Angola
Kyeri Kim
134
OVERLAPPING IMPERIALISMS: COLONIAL AND NEOCOLONIAL
LOGICS OF URBAN GOVERNANCE IN KILAMBA, ANGOLA
1
YOOMI KIM
Introduction
Luanda, located on the Atlantic coast of southwestern Africa, is the capital of Angola and
the country’s political, economic, cultural, and administrative center. Since the sixteenth
century, the city has undergone continuous urban growth accompanied by sustained
population inflows, a process that accelerated markedly during and after the twenty-
seven-year civil war following independence. However, Luanda’s infrastructure and
housing systems proved insufficient to accommodate this rapid transformation(Kim
2025b), resulting in chronic housing shortages, uneven distribution of infrastructure, and
the proliferation of informal settlements.
In response to this urban crisis, the Angolan government launched the National
Reconstruction Program(Programa de Reconstrução Nacional) in the early 2000s, aiming
both to rebuild infrastructure destroyed during the civil war and to establish new engines
of national economic growth. A central objective of this program was to render the state’s
commitment to reconstruction visible domestically and internationally while
simultaneously constructing a renewed national image. To this end, the government
actively pursued foreign capital and international partnerships, within which urban
development emerged as a key instrument of the national reconstruction strategy(Tomás
2022: 183).
It was within this context that Kilamba emerged as a large-scale housing complex located
approximately 30 kilometers outside Luanda’s urban core. Conceived as part of a state-
led policy, Kilamba was intended to alleviate overcrowding in central Luanda, resume
infrastructure investment suspended during the war, and respond to growing urban
housing demand. In 2011, the project was officially inaugurated by ex-President José
Eduardo dos Santos and presented domestically and internationally as a flagship symbol
of postwar reconstruction. Since then, Kilamba has been incorporated into the itineraries
of visiting foreign and domestic dignitaries, where newly constructed buildings and
orderly urban landscapes have been framed as tangible evidence of Angola’s
reconstruction achievements(Chronic 2015).
1
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research
Foundation of Korea(NRF-2024S1A5B5A16020542).
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Kilamba thus came to be positioned as a representative space that visually materialized
state narratives of a “New Angola” or a “New Luanda.” Promoted as a model of modernity,
order, and a forward-looking national future achieved through the combination of foreign
capital and technology, Kilamba emerged as one of the most conspicuous spatial
manifestations of state-led development narratives, frequently framed in terms such as
“the Dubai of Africa.” Its orderly high-rise housing blocks, systematically arranged road
networks, well-maintained green spaces, covered bus stops, and rows of streetlights
stand in sharp contrast to Luanda’s historic urban core, where remnants of Portuguese
colonial urbanism coexist with the material traces of prolonged civil war(Cardoso 2016:
1–19; Pitcher & Moorman 2015: 123–130).
Large-scale urban development projects such as Kilamba in postcolonial Africa have
typically been analyzed through the lenses of national reconstruction, development, or
the expansion of global capital. While these approaches are useful for explaining the
material transformations and policy outcomes produced by development, they offer
limited insight into how urban space is historically constituted through shifting
configurations of power and interaction. In particular, relatively little scholarly attention
has been paid to how colonial urban orders and postcolonial forms of external
intervention intersect and operate together within urban space.
This study addresses this gap by approaching Kilamba as a site where imperialism and
neo-imperialism—distinct yet interrelated forms of imperial governance—intersect and
overlap. Imperialism should not be understood as a legacy that disappeared with the
formal end of colonial rule; rather, it has persisted through institutions of development,
reconstruction, finance, and planned urbanization within the framework of neo-
imperialism. Colonial imperialism and postcolonial neo-imperialism must therefore be
analyzed as institutional frameworks that operate simultaneously within the same spatial
context.
From this perspective, this article proposes the concept of “overlapping imperialisms,”
defined as a condition in which imperial forms of power with different historical origins
coexist within the same national and urban context and become institutionalized as
modes of governance, producing layered effects of inclusion and exclusion. Through this
conceptual lens, the article reinterprets the Kilamba urban project by asking, first, how
imperialism and neo-imperialism persist within Kilamba’s urban space, and second, how
distinct imperial logics are combined within a single urban project and with what
implications for the production of urban space. To address these questions, the article
adopts a comparative approach that examines imperialism and neo-imperialism within a
shared analytical framework.
Imperialism, Neo-Imperialism and Overlapping Imperialisms
Imperialism
At the political and economic level, imperialism is structurally linked to a particular stage
of capitalist development. The concentration of production and capital generates
monopolies, while the dominance of finance capital significantly expands the export of
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Overlapping Imperialisms: Colonial and Neocolonial Logics of Urban
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capital. Within this framework, classical theories of imperialism have understood it as a
power system that emerges when advanced capitalist economies confront the limits of
accumulation, thereby requiring external spaces, and when this requirement becomes
institutionalized through political, economic, social, and cultural mechanisms(Lenin
1917). In this regard, imperial intervention by the state should be understood not simply
as an expression of colonial ambition for territorial expansion, but as an attempt to create
and extend international conditions favorable to capital accumulation(Brenner 2006).
In practice, imperialism has always operated through political and cultural ideologies that
legitimize conquest alongside economic expansion. In Africa, racism and civilizing
discourses functioned as key mechanisms that normalized external
intervention(Campbell 2015). Imperialism should therefore be understood not merely as
territorial occupation, but as a multi-layered logic of domination linking capital expansion,
knowledge production, and spatial reorganization(Cooper 2005). This logic becomes
durable through the institutionalization of legal and administrative frameworks that
sustain control over external spaces.
Imperialism legitimized itself through epistemological hierarchies that framed non-
Western societies as backward and correctable. This representation justified intervention
under the rhetoric of civilization and development and cast domination as a moral
responsibility(Liebersohn 2016). By defining in advance what counted as civilization and
deficiency, imperial power established a hierarchy that preceded formal rule and
determined who was entitled to govern and who was to be governed(Said 1977).
Over time, this imperial epistemology became embedded within concrete institutional
mechanisms of rule. Colonial governance imposed differentiated constraints on
citizenship, legal status, forced labor, freedom of movement, and access to resources.
Colonized populations, above all, were administered through documentary practices and
legal–administrative classification systems constructed by imperial power. While rights
associated with citizenship were only partially extended to local populations, a wide range
of obligations designed to facilitate exploitation were imposed upon them(Cooper 2005).
In this sense, imperialism constitutes a complex power formation in which economic
exploitation, political control, military coercion, and cultural–ideological legitimation
operate in an interlocking manner, grounded in the reconfiguration of epistemological
frameworks(Amin 2017).
Imperial power becomes routinized in everyday life through spatial organization. Space,
as a social product, reflects and reproduces power relations. The ways in which power
structures space shape social relations and institutional orders, condensing the
operational principles of specific regimes(Lefebvre 1991). Consequently, imperial
urbanization inscribes imperial orders and norms into the city itself. Through urban
planning, administrative zoning, infrastructural connectivity, and regulated access to
housing, urban space is transformed into an apparatus that continuously activates
imperial governance.
Such imperial modes of spatial control do not disappear entirely in the postcolonial
period. Rather, the institutions, spatial hierarchies, and political–economic orders
constructed under imperial rule persist as organizing conditions of postcolonial societies.
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Differential distributions of citizenship, the demarcation between legality and illegality,
rules governing access to land and housing, and administrative systems represent
reworked continuities of colonial logics rather than ruptures. While modern imperialism
no longer operates primarily through direct domination, it continues to be invoked
through indirect mechanisms such as development, reconstruction, and the
establishment of new criteria of order and legality(Mbembe 2001; Stoler 2013). From
this perspective, postcolonial urban space emerges as a crucial site where imperial logics
of governance are reactivated in transformed forms. Imperial urban space thus
constitutes a terrain in which imperial rationalities, far from being erased after the end
of colonial rule, are reconfigured and continue to operate. These continuities are not
accidental residues of colonial history but structural conditions that shape how
postcolonial urban governance remains tethered to imperial rationalities.
Neo-Imperialism
Modern imperialism operated through forms of direct rule that combined overseas capital
expansion with territorial domination, accompanied by the transfer of surplus value
generated through production. Neo-imperialism, by contrast, refers to a system in which
such forms of direct domination are weakened, while external intervention is structured
through institutional mechanisms such as international finance, regulatory regimes, and
global norms under conditions in which the formal sovereignty of the target state is
maintained. One of the most significant distinctions between the two lies in the mode of
extraction: under neo-imperialism, exploitation is reorganized into institutionalized
forms—credit, debt, and financial contracts—that are largely detached from direct
production processes. In this sense, neo-imperialism constitutes a transformed and
abstracted continuation of the logic of modern imperialism, marking a shift from direct
to indirect rule and from colonial administration to governance through international
norms and institutional arrangements—a contemporary modality of imperial power(Yu
2020).
Similarly, patterns of world dependency in postcolonial Africa have been reconfigured
through increasingly discreet and institutionalized pathways. From the late nineteenth
century to the Second World War, colonial imperialism—centered on Europe and
combining infrastructure construction such as railways, ports, and mines with formal
territorial control—was dominant(Rodney 2018; Zack-Williams 2013). After the war, the
center of imperial power shifted toward the United States, giving rise to what has been
described as “imperialism without colonies.” From the 1980s onward, the gradual
institutionalization of structural adjustment programs marked a new phase in which
national policy autonomy and development strategies became subordinated to external
financial regimes(Harvey 2017; Zack-Williams 2013). Since the 1990s, the rise of China
has introduced a new variable into this configuration, transforming Africa into a field of
multipolar competition. China came to be perceived as an alternative partner to Western
conditional aid and normative pressure; at the same time, however, it has faced criticism
for generating new forms of neocolonial dependency through loans and development
projects. Across these transformations, core mechanisms of neo-imperialism have
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Overlapping Imperialisms: Colonial and Neocolonial Logics of Urban
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138
included market dependency, profit extraction by multinational corporations, and
institutional devices such as asymmetrical economic partnership agreements(Tull 2006;
Zack-Williams 2013).
Among these mechanisms, the discourse of developmentalism has played a particularly
significant role in materializing neo-imperialism in Africa. Developmentalism has emerged
as a central technology of power that enables neo-imperialism to operate through indirect
forms of governance. Although development is also an internal process of capitalist
expansion, it has increasingly taken shape as a policy framework institutionalized through
international cooperation, aid, and reconstruction programs. Development thus appears
to function as a neutral instrument aimed at “improving” or “enhancing” social conditions;
in practice, however, it operates as a normative framework that pre-organizes the
political and economic conditions necessary for capital accumulation while legitimizing
external intervention(Li 2007; Veltmeyer 2020).
During the Cold War, development was mobilized as a means of anchoring postcolonial
states within Western capitalist trajectories of progress. In the subsequent neoliberal
phase, it functioned through structural adjustment, market liberalization, and fiscal
discipline, thereby limiting national policy choices and inducing social restructuring. In
this process, aid and development cooperation became inseparable from the geopolitical
and strategic interests of donor states. In this way, development provided an institutional
conduit through which external power could intervene without resorting to direct
domination or military coercion. Development thus operates as an indirect and structural
modality of neo-imperialism(Latham 2011; Veltmeyer 2020). This perspective makes it
possible to analyze postcolonial urban development and reconstruction not merely as
state-led modernization processes, but as sites in which neo-imperial logics of
governance are actively at work. What distinguishes this configuration as neo-imperial is
that the authority shaping urban life is displaced outward, embedding external standards
and financial structures into the internal organization of postcolonial space.
Overlapping Imperialisms: A Conceptual Synthesis
Kilamba has most often been analyzed within a framework that emphasizes the postwar
expansion of a Chinese-style development model in Angola. Such approaches, however,
suffer from two major limitations. First, they tend to overlook how the logics of
governance and spatial order produced under Portuguese colonial imperialism continue
to be reactivated in the postcolonial period. Second, by treating China’s intervention as
the linear arrival of a new external actor, they fail to capture the more complex condition
in which different imperial logics operate simultaneously within the same national, urban,
and project-specific context(Kim 2025c).
Accordingly, this study reconceptualizes Kilamba not as a post-imperial space, but as a
site in which multiple forms of imperial governance coexist in overlapping ways. The
central analytical shift lies in moving beyond a periodized distinction that separates
Portuguese colonial imperialism and Chinese neo-imperialism into discrete historical
phases and instead focusing on how different forms of imperial power operate
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Overlapping Imperialisms: Colonial and Neocolonial Logics of Urban
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Kyeri Kim
139
concurrently within a single urban development project. To capture this configuration,
the study advances the concept of “overlapping imperialisms.” Overlapping imperialisms
refers to a condition in which imperial forms of governance with distinct historical origins
and modes of power coexist within the same national or urban space, become
institutionalized as modes of governance, and, through this process, produce layered
effects of inclusion and exclusion. This concept does not simply identify imperialism in
terms of continuity or legacy; rather, it serves as a conceptual device for analyzing how
the normative and spatial logics of colonial imperialism and the financialized
developmental logics of neo-imperialism operate simultaneously within specific
institutions and projects, producing new configurations of governance and power.
To empirically analyze overlapping imperialisms, this study structures Chapters III and
IV around a comparative framework that treats imperialism and neo-imperialism not as
temporally separated stages, but as coexisting modes of power within a shared analytical
field. Methodologically, the analysis organizes the operation of imperial power in urban
space into three interrelated dimensions: epistemological, institutional, and political,
each centered on a distinct mechanism of power. First, at the epistemological level,
imperial power defines what constitutes a problem and what forms of intervention are
legitimate through justificatory ideologies such as the civilizing mission and
developmentalism, conceptualized here as Ideological Regimes of Legitimation. Second,
at the institutional level, these epistemologies materialize through the Institutionalization
of Spatial Politics, whereby legal frameworks, administrative systems, urban planning,
and classificatory criteria are deployed to organize urban space and populations. Third,
these processes culminate at the political level in Regimes of Citizenship, through which
access to the city and the conditions under which particular forms of life are recognized
as “normal” or legitimate citizenship are reconfigured. This threefold analytical structure
reveals core mechanisms through which imperial power operates across imperial
discourse, the politics of urban space, and the production of citizenship in the city of
Luanda. This framework therefore does not merely describe continuity between imperial
forms, but provides an analytical tool for identifying how multiple regimes of power
become layered within concrete urban institutions.
Imperial Urban Formation and Structure
Ideological Regimes of Legitimation: The Civilizing Mission
Kilamba is one of the large-scale housing projects that came to symbolize Angola’s
postwar reconstruction in the postcolonial period. Yet the formation and spatial
organization of Kilamba bear the clear imprint of Portuguese imperial logics of
governance that were already established during the historical construction of Luanda.
In 1576, Portugal entered what is now Angola by establishing a foothold on Ilha de Cabo—
also known as Ilha de Luanda—and founded the city under the name São Paulo de
Assunção de Loanda(Kim 2021: 62). Luanda soon emerged as a central hub of the
Atlantic slave trade and became a strategic site through which Portuguese colonial rule
was organized and rendered visible in urban space. Modeled after Lisbon, Luanda was
planned as a Western-style city, spatially divided along social hierarchies and infused
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140
with imperial ideology through its urban form(Kim 2025b: 70–72). As a result, Luanda
came to be recognized as one of the oldest continuously urbanized cities in sub-Saharan
Africa and as a paradigmatic case of Portuguese colonial urbanization(Jenkins et al. 2002:
139). The foundational principles of this colonial urban planning did not disappear with
decolonization but persisted in reconfigured forms in the postcolonial period.
Portuguese imperialism was materially inscribed in Luanda through architecture, street
names, and systems of administrative nomenclature. These elements formed part of a
broader European mode of urban design and functioned as a key means through which
the imperial logic of the missão civilizadora—the civilizing mission—was enacted and
made visible in Africa. The civilizing mission constituted a central justificatory ideology
through which imperial domination was represented not as coercion or exploitation, but
as the fulfillment of historical progress and moral responsibility. Within this framework,
colonized societies were defined as “uncivilized,” while European civilization was posited
as a universal standard to be emulated and ultimately achieved. Imperial intervention
was thus reframed as education, reform, protection, and development, enabling imperial
power to position itself not as an agent of violence but as a mediator of civilization. In
this sense, the civilizing mission functioned as an ideological apparatus that allowed
imperial rule to be sustained through the rhetoric of universal values and human
progress, even as military and political domination continued(Pomeranz 2005).
Assimilationist(assimilação) policy operated as a concrete extension of the civilizing
mission within the colonial city. Through institutional mechanisms, it promoted the use
of Portuguese as the official language, the imposition of Catholic order, Portuguese
architectural styles, and European modes of everyday life. Through these processes,
Luanda became a site in which the social and cultural identity of the Portuguese empire
was projected, internalized, and enacted in practice(Kim 2025d: 562; Pinto & Jerónimo
2015: 2–15). In this regard, Luanda’s colonial urban landscape constitutes the spatial
organization and visual reproduction of an imperial worldview premised on Western
civilizational superiority. The civilizing mission and its concrete implementation through
assimilationist policy thus operated as key ideological regimes of imperial legitimation.
The hierarchical structures produced through these spatial practices, centered on the
colonial city, were not fully dismantled after decolonization and continue to shape the
postcolonial urban order.
Institutionalization of Imperial Spatial Politics: Legal and Administrative
Classification
The urban structure of Luanda was shaped through a dual spatial division between cidade
alta(meaning the upper city) and cidade baixa(meaning the lower city), a model
characteristic of Portuguese colonial urban planning. This configuration reflected the
functional differentiation and hierarchical ordering of space under colonial rule. Cidade
baixa, located in the low-lying coastal zone, concentrated ports, administrative
institutions, commercial facilities, and residential areas for European settlers, serving as
the material center of colonial governance and economic activity. By contrast, cidade
alta, situated on higher ground, was organized around military defensive functions and
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religious institutions and functioned as a residential space for select elites, embodying
colonial authority and symbolic power. This dual structure appeared repeatedly across
Portuguese colonial cities. Derived from Lisbon’s urban principles and transplanted into
the colonial context, it demonstrates that urban planning functioned as a central
instrument for organizing imperial governance(Milheiro 2020: 397–409). Such spatial
ordering reflects the operation of a strongly Eurocentric spatial ideology, in which
Portuguese colonial authorities regarded metropolitan urban forms as universal and ideal
models and applied them uncritically to colonial settings.
Portuguese imperialism further fragmented Luanda’s urban space through systematic
differentiation along social and racial hierarchies. As colonial rule intensified, urban
zoning increasingly followed distinctions based on skin color and class. The city center
was planned as a modern, institutionalized space reserved for Europeans and colonial
elites, while local populations were deliberately excluded and marginalized within the
urban fabric(Braz & Raposo 2021: 46–49). This spatial segmentation extended beyond
the physical separation of residential areas and was institutionalized through legal and
administrative classifications of urban residents. Based on documented legal status,
access to movement and urban space was differentially regulated. A representative
example was the Estatuto do Indigenato, which legally distinguished between the
indígena(indigenous) and the civilizado or assimilado. As a result, everyday rights related
to education, employment, and licensing became contingent upon legal status, and social
hierarchies were formally codified. Furthermore, the ID card, bilhete de identidade, was
selectively issued and functioned as a decisive marker certifying one’s status as “civilized”
within the colonial order(Neto 1997: 348).
These imperial status regimes were enacted in everyday urban governance. Introduced
in 1928, the caderneta indígena was a document that recorded taxation, labor
obligations, residential status, and legal identity. Individuals who failed to carry this
document or possessed incomplete records were subject to administrative sanctions and
restrictions on movement, effectively limiting local residents’ access to the urban
core(Nascimento 2013: 108; Roque 2009: 47, 227). Such spatial segmentation
embedded a hierarchical binary between ruling and subjugated populations into the
material foundations of the city. Consequently, Luanda’s colonial urban center—where
infrastructure was concentrated—became a space in which entry and residence were
selectively permitted through documented legality. In contrast, peripheral areas were
designated as “illegal” spaces, a classification that colonial discourse itself equated with
disorder and rendered subject to governance. In this sense, Luanda’s urban
segmentation crystallized as an institutional mechanism that inscribed racial and class
hierarchies into space and differentially allocated rights of access, mobility, and
residence.
As Luanda’s population expanded rapidly and processes of urban expansion and
modernization accelerated, colonial authorities restructured the city by demolishing
residential areas inhabited by local populations in the urban core and gradually displacing
them toward the periphery. Those excluded from the center began to settle in
agriculturally based informal settlements located on the city’s margins, known as
Musseque(sometimes rendered locally as Musseke). Musseque represents both the
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cumulative outcome of long-standing political, social, and economic inequalities in
Luanda and a spatial condensation of colonial domination and subsequent forms of
political and economic marginalization. Structurally contrasted with the institutionalized
zones of the urban core, Musseque renders the fragmented nature of Luanda’s
urbanization particularly visible(Kim 2025a: 254).
The term Musseque derives from Kimbundu, the language of the Mbundu people, and is
composed of mu(place) and seke(sand), generally referring to red soil or unpaved
land(Kim 2025b: 76–77). The term thus evokes residential environments characterized
by the absence of paved roads and basic infrastructure. In this sense, Musseque signifies
urban spaces where fundamental services—such as roads, water supply, sanitation, and
electricity—are scarce or entirely absent. These areas stand in sharp contrast to the
paved and institutionalized cement city, referred to as cidade de cimento(meaning
cement city, Jenkins et al. 2002: 142), or the asphalt city, cidade de asfalto(meaning
asphalt city, Viegas 2016: 598)(Kim 2025b: 72–80).
Musseque expanded organically outside the frameworks of colonial urban planning and
administrative management. Although these settlements absorbed the labor force
essential to the growth and maintenance of the colonial city, they were systematically
excluded from infrastructural investment and public service provision. As a result,
residents’ livelihoods and social networks were destabilized, and both physical and social
disconnection from the urban core rendered everyday life increasingly precarious(Braz &
Raposo 2021: 47–50; Kim 2025b: 72–76).
Moreover, each phase of urban development subjected Musseque to repeated forced
evictions on the grounds that it constituted an “unplanned space.” Residents were
displaced to peripheral highlands or areas with even poorer infrastructure, where new
Musseque settlements emerged, thereby facilitating the continued spatial expansion of
Luanda(Kim 2025b: 75–80). These displacements were enacted through coercive means
integral to the realization of imperial urban order. In this respect, the formation of
Musseque demonstrates that spatial politics in the colonial city functioned not merely as
physical separation or a housing issue, but as an institutional mechanism that
hierarchically organized populations through the articulation of legal status,
administrative classification, and differentiated access to urban space.
Imperial Citizenship: Legality-Based Regimes of Citizenship
Kilamba was conceived as part of former President José Eduardo dos Santos’s strategy
to implement the pledge of constructing one million housing units, first announced in
2008 in the lead-up to the 2012 elections(Kimari & Ernstson 2023: 1876). The name
“Kilamba” itself was drawn from the Kimbundu name of Agostinho Neto, Angola’s first
president and a central symbol of the anti-colonial liberation struggle. This act of naming
suggests that the project was envisioned as a space symbolizing anti-imperial nation-
building and the formation of a postcolonial national identity rooted in Neto’s
legacy(Chronic 2015).
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In practice, however, the actual process of constructing Kilamba and organizing its urban
space unfolded less as an embodiment of anti-imperial national identity than as a
reproduction of preexisting state-led imperial urban development logics. Low-income
populations and informal settlers—long excluded from the urban core since the colonial
period—were once again marginalized in the planning process, and Kilamba functioned
as a selectively developed space centered on particular social strata and external capital.
This demonstrates that, rather than overcoming imperial spatial orders, the postcolonial
state has reproduced and intensified them in transformed forms.
Above all, throughout its development Kilamba operated as a mechanism for
restructuring citizenship by selectively regulating access to urban space and residential
eligibility. This process was justified through political rhetoric centered on “national
reconstruction” and “modern urbanization,” which legitimized the demolition of existing
settlements, the displacement of residents, and the redefinition of conditions for housing
access. In Luanda’s broader reconstruction and housing development trajectory, informal
settlements such as Musseque were repeatedly targeted for demolition under the pretext
of improving urban aesthetics and promoting “orderly urbanization,” resulting in the
relocation of large numbers of residents to resettlement sites on the distant
periphery(Braz & Raposo 2021: 45–47; Gastrow 2018: 2–3). These practices of eviction
and displacement persisted into the postcolonial period, reproducing hierarchical spatial
relations between the urban core and the periphery, and were reiterated during the
development of Kilamba.
Spatial exclusion surrounding Kilamba was further legitimized at the legal and
institutional level. Land acquisition for large-scale housing construction, the allocation of
housing units, and the definition of residential eligibility all operated on the basis of formal
legal registration and documented ownership, systematically excluding modes of urban
life grounded in informal residence and long-term occupation. Under the Land Law
enacted in 2004(Lei de Terras, Lei n.º 9/04), unregistered land was defined as state
property, and informal documents such as purchase receipts or certificates of occupation
were denied legal recognition(Nielsen 2007: 12–15). This legal regime rendered
traditional occupation and long-term residence institutionally vulnerable and reclassified
many Musseque residents as “illegal occupants”(ibid: 33–34). In practice,
SONIP(Sonangol Imobiliária e Propriedades), the state-owned real estate company
responsible for the management and allocation of housing units in Kilamba, evicted
numerous households on the grounds that their documentation was incomplete. These
measures effectively deprived residents of housing rights through appeals to formal
legality(Kajibanga 2023: 43–46). Taken together, these processes demonstrate that
postcolonial housing policy in Luanda, much like its colonial predecessor, has relied on
formal legal order as a central instrument for selectively regulating and controlling access
to urban space.
Consequently, large-scale state-led housing projects such as Kilamba failed to function
as viable housing alternatives for displaced residents. Many evictees lost their homes
without adequate legal compensation, while the pricing structures and eligibility criteria
of newly constructed housing units structurally excluded low-income and informally
housed populations(Buire 2014: 302–304; Croese 2016: 90–92). Contrary to official
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discourses of “housing rights” and “inclusive reconstruction,” Kilamba ultimately emerged
as a selectively accessible residential space primarily occupied by middle-class
households or those with political and economic connections(Gastrow 2020: 512–515).
This mode of spatial organization exhibits clear structural continuity with colonial
governance logics in Luanda, where urban space was organized through distinctions
between “orderly citizens” and populations designated for management and control. In
this sense, Kilamba is less a product of a fully dismantled imperial spatial order than a
revealing case in which imperial regimes of citizenship persist in transformed forms within
postcolonial development practices.
Neo-Imperial Urban Reconfiguration and Its Operations
Ideological Regimes of Legitimation under Neo-Imperialism:
Developmentalism
Following the end of the civil war in 2002, postwar reconstruction in Angola assumed
critical importance in rebuilding infrastructure destroyed over twenty-seven years of
conflict. In particular, the reconstruction of Luanda was treated not only as a technical
task of recovery but also as a political project aimed at reorganizing the state and
consolidating the governing party’s legitimacy. In practice, Angola’s postwar
reconstruction was pursued through a strategy in which the state rapidly mobilized public
investment and distributed resources to key support bases, thereby managing political
competition(Croese 2017: 80). Within this context, housing provision and urban
development extended beyond the domain of social welfare policy and emerged as
prominent arenas in which state power could be rendered visible as political
“achievement.” In other words, urban development functioned not merely as an
economic policy instrument but as a governing technology through which the state
sought to integrate society and reorder spatial and social relations.
Against this backdrop, Kilamba was conceived as a flagship project of the postwar, state-
led housing program and, following its official inauguration by the president, operated as
a space in which Angola’s reconstruction achievements were visually displayed(Croese
2017: 94; Gastrow 2020: 509). The construction of Kilamba through state intervention
was thus directly articulated with developmentalism and entangled with external capital.
The resulting neo-imperial interventions by external actors reconfigured urban space and
everyday norms according to externally defined standards.
Developmentalism operates as a knowledge–power nexus that defines local societies in
terms of “lack” and legitimizes external intervention through the rhetoric of
improvement(Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994). Rather than neutral policy, it functions as
a normative system that reduces political conflict to technical management and enables
imperial power to operate without direct rule(Adalet 2025). Developmentalism thus
operates not simply as policy, but as a form of external authority that reorganizes urban
life according to standards produced outside the local political field.
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Neo-imperial developmentalism materialized concretely in Kilamba’s urban form.
Constructed in a peripheral zone spatially detached from Luanda’s existing urban core,
Kilamba functioned as a space that structurally weakened everyday mobility and access
to the city for urban residents. This reduction in accessibility was justified as a “rational
choice” grounded in developmental rationality. Rather than prioritizing gradual
integration with existing urban structures or acknowledging locally embedded spatial
practices, developmental discourse reimagines peripheral zones—often characterized by
lower land costs and looser regulatory constraints—as “undeveloped” and “potential”
spaces of growth. Through this logic, developmentalism has repeatedly produced
patterns of peripheralization and spatial fragmentation across African metropolises.
These outcomes stem from the abstraction of urban space into functions and forms,
relegating social and historical connections to secondary concerns. Leapfrog
development, in this regard, is legitimized as an efficient pathway capable of delivering
visible results within a short time frame(Lall et al. 2017: 64–70). In Angola, the rapid
construction of externally driven urban projects through Chinese capital and technology
followed planning logics and developmental criteria defined from outside, largely
disregarding existing physical and social linkages.
Moreover, Kilamba transplanted a standardized urban model organized according to
predefined development benchmarks and administrative efficiency, rather than reflecting
local residents’ aspirations, everyday practices, or historically constituted spatial
sensibilities. The standardized housing typologies in Kilamba—typically composed of two
to four bedrooms—were designed according to institutional assumptions that treated the
nuclear family as the ideal residential unit, overlooking local family arrangements in
which extended and multi-generational households are common(Kimari & Ernstson 2023:
1878–1880). These housing models resulted in the spatial internalization of a particular
vision of citizenship and family norms. Such outcomes reflect a top-down mode of urban
planning rooted in developmental discourse, one that systematically excludes residents’
lived experiences and spatial practices(Escobar 1995: 3–11; Ziai 2013: 123–126). The
case of Kilamba is particularly significant in demonstrating how large-scale housing
construction enabled by Chinese capital and technology contributes to the legitimation
and systematization of a developmentalist urban model as a transferable and replicable
form of development(Dittgen & Chungu 2019: 645–648).
In this way, externally formulated spatial layouts and housing typologies penetrate
multiple layers of urban life, implicitly defining particular ways of living and forms of
citizenship as “normal” and “progressive.” Urban spatial organization thus fixes specific
social practices and power relations into the material form of the city, rendering them
internalized and taken for granted. By organizing urban space according to externally
normalized lifestyles and citizenship models, developmentalism marginalizes alternative
communal imaginaries and ways of life(Lefebvre 1991; Purcell 2002: 99–104). As a
result, community-based imaginaries and alternative possibilities embedded in urban
space are excluded, while standardized, top-down pathways of urbanization are
presented as the singular route to development. Through this process, neo-imperial
governance produces its effects without overt coercion or formal institutional domination,
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instead reproducing developmental discourse as a legitimate order that reshapes urban
space and everyday life and embeds neo-imperial ideology within routine practices.
Institutionalization of Neo-Imperial Spatial Politics: Oil-Backed Credit
Following the end of the civil war, Angola’s reconstruction agenda presupposed the
mobilization of large-scale capital. However, Western aid and loan mechanisms imposed
conditions that the Angolan government found difficult to meet in the immediate postwar
context. International financial institutions and major donor countries required prior
compliance with standards related to fiscal transparency, macroeconomic management,
and institutional reform, thereby constraining access to reconstruction finance. In
particular, the International Monetary Fund(IMF)’s Staff-Monitored Program(SMP)
functioned as a surveillance mechanism that evaluated the implementation of
institutional reforms as a prerequisite for financial assistance. Such programs required
the Angolan government to demonstrate tangible progress in fiscal transparency,
macroeconomic governance, and public financial reform before accessing external funds,
thereby imposing substantively and procedurally demanding conditions(Tan-Mullins et al.
2010: 868–869). For a postwar government that prioritized speed and visibility in
national reconstruction, this conditional mode of access constituted a significant political
and administrative burden. As a result, Western aid channels remained formally available
yet practically difficult to utilize.
Moreover, access to Western financing was further constrained by changes in Angola’s
macroeconomic status. Rising state revenues from oil exports gradually moved Angola
out of the low-income country category, thereby weakening its institutional eligibility for
concessional development finance. In practice, Angola’s income level exceeding the
threshold for International Development Association(IDA) eligibility, combined with low
levels of institutional trust, made it difficult to secure stable long-term financing through
Western financial institutions(World Bank 2007: 1–13). Consequently, the Angolan
government actively sought alternative financial mechanisms characterized by fewer
preconditions and faster disbursement.
It was within this context that oil-backed credit(oil-backed loans)—the core mechanism
of China–Angola cooperation—emerged(Alves 2013: 100–105; Kiala 2010: 314–316). In
November 2003, Angola signed a framework agreement with China, which was formally
approved in October 2004. On this basis, China constructed a credit structure through
the China Exim Bank and the China International Fund(CIF) that guaranteed loan
repayment through long-term crude oil supply. This arrangement enabled the rapid
mobilization of reconstruction funds without the institutional reform conditions required
by Western financial institutions. At the same time, however, Angola’s core national
asset, oil, became structurally tied to China through financial and diplomatic contractual
relations(Cardoso 2016: 11–12).
This oil-based financial mechanism functioned as a central organizing principle of urban
development itself. In this sense, large-scale postwar housing projects such as Kilamba
constitute outcomes of oil-based urbanization, or petro-urbanism, produced through oil-
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backed credit(Rapanyane 2021: 103–104). Under this model, Chinese credit was first
extended on the basis of repayment guarantees secured through oil exports, followed by
the execution of construction by Chinese state-owned or quasi-state-owned enterprises
such as China International Trust Investment Corporation(CITIC). Subsequently, the
Angolan government intervened through policy instruments—including allocation
mechanisms, pricing adjustments, and subsidy schemes—to complete urban space and
regulate access to and occupation of newly developed areas. Within this sequence, urban
development was not autonomously determined by market logics or local demand but
was preconfigured through a chain of mechanisms linking oil exports, financial contracts,
construction execution, and state intervention. In this way, oil-backed credit operated as
a form of spatial power that structurally pre-determined the timing, scale, layout, and
conditions of access to urban space, functioning as an institutional mechanism that
organized the city as an object of governance(Cardoso 2016: 11–15).
For such finance-based spatial power to be realized in material urban form, corresponding
institutional power structures within the state were indispensable. In Luanda, spatial
power was concretized through a centralized governance structure centered on the
presidency. Neo-imperial spatial intervention should therefore be understood not as the
unilateral penetration of external capital, but as a governing effect produced through the
articulation of external finance with domestic structures of concentrated political power.
In Angola, major reconstruction and housing projects—including Kilamba—were initiated
as state-led development programs placed under the direct authority of presidential
power. During its initial construction phase, the Kilamba project was supervised by the
Gabinete de Reconstrução Nacional(GRN), a presidential agency responsible for
overseeing national reconstruction. Established in 2004, the GRN functioned as a key
institution that applied Chinese loans to reconstruction projects while managing funds
and supervising construction(Corkin 2013: 7–8; Kajibanga 2023: 6–7, 18–19). Although
formally an administrative body, the GRN operated in close alignment with the
Presidency, particularly the Casa Militar. As a result, major reconstruction and housing
projects in Luanda bypassed conventional government ministries and were placed under
the direct control of presidential authority, with urban development proceeding through
the combined operation of financial mechanisms and centralized political power(ibid: 19–
20).
Kilamba offers the clearest illustration of how oil-backed credit organizes urban space in
practice. Construction of Kilamba was undertaken by the Chinese state-owned enterprise
CITIC. The project was developed as a large-scale planned city accommodating
approximately 20,000 households and conceived as a “complete urban space”
encompassing residential complexes, commercial districts, and public facilities.
Completed over a period of roughly three years, Kilamba represents the outcome of a
development process in which Chinese credit, construction by Chinese firms, and state-
led allocation and price-control policies were tightly integrated(Cardoso 2016: 11–15;
Kimari & Ernstson 2023: 1876–1878). This mode of development preconfigured the
conditions of urban formation and spatial arrangement without requiring explicit coercion
or direct intervention by China. In this respect, Kilamba constitutes a paradigmatic case
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in which neo-imperial urban intervention is materially embedded in urban space through
oil-backed_credit.
Neo-Imperial Citizenship: Consumption-Based Regimes of Citizenship
Although Kilamba was officially presented as a state-led public housing model intended
for low-income populations, in practice it functioned as a highly selective residential
space, diverging sharply from policy discourses emphasizing inclusive urban
development. Housing prices, eligibility requirements, and administrative procedures
were structured around criteria that were difficult for the urban poor and informal settlers
to meet. As a result, effective access to housing in Kilamba was largely limited to middle-
class households with stable incomes and connections to administrative or political
networks, including civil servants(Gastrow 2020: 509–516; Kimari & Ernstson 2023:
1878–1880). In this configuration, access to housing was not grounded in social need or
housing as a right, but conditioned upon purchasing power and administrative eligibility.
This demonstrates that state-led housing policy reconstituted housing not as a universal
citizenship right but as a conditional form of access. Such conditionality laid the
groundwork for Kilamba’s consolidation as a space that reproduces elite-centered social
differentiation and exclusion.
Kilamba’s location constituted a key spatial condition reinforcing its fixation as a
residential space for particular social groups. Developed as a new urban area on Luanda’s
periphery and spatially detached from the existing urban core, Kilamba was
administratively incorporated into the newly established municipality of Belas following
the 2011 territorial reorganization. This locational choice structurally weakened everyday
connections with the city center, while inadequate public transportation infrastructure
continually intensified residents’ mobility burdens. Empirical studies indicate that
approximately 45 percent of Kilamba residents spend at least two hours commuting to
work, and proposals to improve public transport connectivity have been discussed only
belatedly and have failed to function as effective alternatives(Croese 2016: 19–20).
As a result, although Kilamba was designed as a perfect city equipped with residential,
commercial, and public facilities, it functioned in practice as a spatially isolated enclave
disconnected from Luanda’s existing urban system. Kilamba thus emerged as a new
centrality characterized by weak functional integration with the city’s transportation,
commercial, and employment networks, effectively operating as a self-contained
residential zone. This spatial isolation has defined Kilamba as a suburbanized space
primarily accessible to middle-class residents possessing stable incomes and reliable
means of mobility, while simultaneously generating tensions with the socio-economic
structure of the existing urban core(Buire 2014: 291–299).
Consequently, Kilamba became a space that was effectively inaccessible to low-income
populations whose livelihoods depend on core-based economic activities, informal
economies, and dense everyday social networks. Residential life in Kilamba presupposes
a level of income sufficient to absorb prolonged commuting costs, stable employment,
and the consumption capacity necessary to sustain daily life outside the urban core.
These locational and economic conditions transformed housing access in Kilamba from a
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citizenship right into a selectable option contingent upon a particular lifestyle and
economic capacity. In this sense, Kilamba was configured as a space that privileges
specific social groups while failing to account for urban livelihoods shaped by informal
income structures, core-oriented mobility patterns, and dense social ties. Residents
excluded from this space were pushed further outward, and Kilamba became consolidated
as an “island-like” residential enclave functionally segmented from Luanda’s broader
urban structure. This spatial configuration demonstrates how access to the city can be
selectively regulated on the basis of lifestyle norms and economic conditions.
Such modes of urbanization convert access to housing from a universal citizenship right
into a conditional status differentiated according to consumption capacity and market
access. This process illustrates how developmentalist spatial restructuring operates in
conjunction with neoliberal logics of accumulation, resonating with the mechanism of
“accumulation by dispossession,” whereby contemporary capitalism seeks new pathways
of accumulation through the appropriation of communal resources and rights—such as
land, housing, and public assets—when it confronts limits to accumulation through
production(Harvey 2017: 73–79). The forced displacement, dismantling of communities,
and legally justified land appropriation observed in Kilamba reveal how these
accumulation mechanisms persist in transformed forms in the postcolonial period,
building upon the legacies of imperial dispossession. As a result, citizenship is no longer
constituted primarily as a matter of rights but is reconfigured as a regulated and
conditional status predicated on specific housing forms and consumption capacity. In this
respect, Kilamba stands as a revealing case that condenses how citizenship is spatially
selected and recalibrated within neo-imperial urban orders.
Conclusion
This study has sought to demonstrate that the urban space of Kilamba constitutes a site
in which distinct imperial modes of governance operate in overlapping and mutually
reinforcing ways. Rather than treating Portuguese colonial urban order and China’s neo-
imperial developmental intervention as separate or sequential phases, the analysis
approached them as coexisting regimes of power operating simultaneously within a single
urban project. Through this lens, the study has shown that Kilamba is not a space in
which imperialism has been overcome, but one in which imperial logics persist and are
reconfigured in transformed forms. The two imperial rationalities operate in a
complementary manner. Colonial legal and spatial hierarchies provided the groundwork
for neo-imperial development, while finance and developmentalism re-legitimized these
structures. Kilamba thus selects “qualified citizens” through legality and market access,
transforming rather than eliminating imperial exclusion.
Viewed through the analytical categories proposed in this study, imperialism and neo-
imperialism—despite their distinct historical contexts and operative mechanisms—share
structural affinities in the ways they reorganize urban space and local life. At the level of
ideological legitimation, colonial imperialism constructed local societies as inefficient and
backward, framing them as objects to be improved through civilization and development.
Neo-imperial developmentalism, by contrast, represents local lives and social relations
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as immature or irrational, positioning them as targets for correction through external
capital, technology, and administrative rationality. Although articulated through different
vocabularies, both discourses converge functionally in their negation of locally grounded
ways of life and their imposition of externally defined norms and lifestyles as universal
standards. Kilamba therefore reveals that postcolonial urban modernity is not a break
from empire but a reconfiguration of imperial power through new institutional forms.
At the level of spatial politics, imperialism organized urban space hierarchically through
law, administration, and racialized and social classifications. Neo-imperialism, by
contrast, restructures space through financial contracts, development projects, and loan
arrangements that appear economic or technical in nature. Yet despite this shift in
instruments, the core governing logic persists: urban space is reduced to an abstract
object of management, and specific orders and conditions of access are institutionally
inscribed. Kilamba exemplifies how neo-imperial spatial politics become institutionalized
through the languages of finance and development rather than through overt political
domination.
Finally, at the level of citizenship, imperial rule selected urban residents on the basis of
legality, discipline, and order, positioning those excluded as populations to be managed
or controlled. Under neo-imperial urban regimes, these criteria are reconfigured into
ostensibly technical and economic conditions such as consumption capacity, market
access, and lifestyle compatibility. While this transformation appears neutral and
depoliticized, it continues to reproduce exclusion by selectively regulating access to urban
space. Citizenship is thus no longer constituted as a universal right, but as a conditional
status predicated upon specific housing forms and consumption capabilities.
Through this analysis, the study has proposed overlapping imperialisms as a theoretical
and methodological framework. This concept neither reduces imperialism to a static
legacy of the past nor isolates neo-imperialism as an entirely novel phenomenon.
Instead, overlapping imperialisms offers an analytical lens for examining how state-led
development, dependence on external finance, and spatial exclusion repeatedly intersect
in postcolonial African cities beyond the case of Kilamba. By advancing this framework,
the study contributes a conceptual bridge linking imperial studies, urban studies, and
African studies, and provides a grounded approach for understanding postcolonial cities
as spaces in which imperial logics continue to be reworked rather than erased.
While this article has focused on Kilamba as a specific urban project in Luanda, it does
not claim that the configuration observed here is representative of all postcolonial urban
developments in Africa. Rather, Kilamba is approached as an analytically strategic site
through which the concept of overlapping imperialisms can be examined in a concrete
and empirically grounded manner. The framework proposed here is therefore intended
to be suggestive rather than exhaustive, offering a lens for comparative inquiry into how
multiple imperial logics may intersect in other postcolonial urban contexts. Its
significance lies in showing that postcolonial cities cannot be understood outside the
overlapping infrastructures of past and present imperial power. Recognizing these
overlapping structures is essential for any critical understanding of contemporary urban
governance in postcolonial contexts.
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