This paper aims to question the role of the Diamond Company of Angola (Diamang) in planning and building workers’ estates in Luanda between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s. Diamang promoted two distinct neighbourhoods, one for European workers in the central and affluent Miramar area and one for African workers in the city’s outskirts, along the Estrada de Catete. Their construction illuminates lengthy bureaucratic processes, shaped by a complex network of institutional actors, including a contentious Aesthetics Commission, as well as the pivotal contributions of local architects, whose everyday tasks remain mostly unknown. The location of Diamang’s workers’ estates, arguably determined by race and class, also gives rise to significant questions regarding social stratification and spatial control during Luanda’s expansion, including the outlines of later major urban plans. Moreover, the paper will examine the potential intersections between Diamang’s housing plans in Luanda and the socio-political welfare agenda in the mining region, which was associated with mining companies in the former Belgian Congo and their landscape production, as well as international discussions on labor, productivity, industrialisation, and urbanisation. In a different yet complementary line of inquiry, links to housing debates in Portugal will be explored for a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the spatializations of late colonialism in Africa and its impacts.

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