If you need to use Axis2/C and related project for serious work then you might need to understand the internals of its build system. Axis2/C uses GNU auto build tools to build the project libraries. A simple and good reading on the subject can be found here.
If the usual configure, make, make install does not work for your platform when installing Axis2/C it is advisable to download and install autotools for your system before installing Axis2/C.
In a dabian system what you need to install from apt repositories are
libtool
autoconf
automake
After installing these tools running the build.sh found in your Axis2/C source distribution(You can find this script only in the Axis2/C svn repository) will run these tools to generate your Configure and Makefiles.
ccache is another tool that you can find in apt repositories which would greatly increase your recompile performance.
Also make sure that you have installed zlib1g-dev which is available from apt repositories
