Urban Quality Indicators for Assessing Sustainability in Informal Settlements in Mozambique:

A Case Study of Nampula City

Abstract

Informal settlements in fast-growing cities frequently develop with uneven access to essential services and infrastructure, creating persistent constraints on living conditions and on the achievement of SDG 11. In Mozambique, national policy has recognised the need to improve these areas, including through the National Strategy for Intervention in Informal Settlements. What remains less developed is a locally grounded procedure for selecting, testing and ranking urban-quality indicators before they are used for assessment. This article examines Namutequeliua and Muatala in Nampula using a sequential assessment framework. A mixed-methods design brought together expert consultation through Delphi, prioritisation with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and neighbourhood assessment with the Sustainability Barometer (SB). Service infrastructure received the highest thematic weight (0.25). The SB classified the two neighbourhoods within the lower, potentially unsustainable range. From 2017 to 2022, the energy and transport dimensions registered improvement, while water supply, waste and wastewater moved in the opposite direction. The resulting framework is intended to support evidence-based planning, the ordering of investment needs and the monitoring of upgrading interventions in informal settlements.