The streets of the economic capital of the Ivory Coast, Abidjan, were flooded by a tide of orange, the colors of the national soccer team, when it won the African Cup of Nations this Sunday, of which it was the host country.
Stéphane Diabou Koné also celebrated the victory, but upon returning home he was reunited with reality: a building without walls, water or electricity.
However, from his workplace, he can see dozens of backhoes building a block in front of his, for which no reform or improvement plan has been planned.
The building where families like Koné's live poorly does not correspond to the glittering appearance that the Ivorian Government has tried to project during the recently completed African Cup, an opportunity to strengthen its image as a regional economic power.
The Minister of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Bouaké Fofana, announced in December an “operation to clean the main arteries” of Abidjan, “crowded with vendors and artisans”, to “present a beautiful image” of the country to the world.
Some Ivorians report that this is the latest of many attempts by the authorities to beautify Abidjan, and that these have resulted in the loss of homes without warning.
For example, that of the families in this building, where sheets delimit the spaces of each home and the 36 occupants pay a small rent to the first tenant, who settled here in 2020.
Room of a family that lives in the abandoned building.
Isabel Bonnet
The NGO Movimiento Colombe Côte d'Ivoire, which is responsible for helping evicted families from Abidjan, has recorded destruction of more than 40,000 homes in the last decade, which is equivalent to 4,000 homes per year.
On January 30, while the Ivory Coast national team celebrated its qualification to the quarterfinals of the Africa Cup, the communities of Yopougon, one of the largest neighborhoods in Abidjan, mourned the demolition of their homes.
One of the neighbors, Leonard Falet, recounts what it was like when military personnel arrived at his parents' house: “They ordered us to leave our houses and proceeded to demolish them without carrying out a prior census or offering any compensation.”
The house had four bedrooms and the family had lived there since 2000 with two of their children and four grandchildren.
“It was an acquired property.
Maybe some people built on state land, but my father paid to live in his house.”
The father, a retired 80-year-old man, was in France receiving medical treatment.
A regional power
Since coming to power, President Alassane Ouattara has been focused on modernization projects in Abidjan, such as the construction of several roads or a metro.
After all, Abidjan is the face of Côte d'Ivoire to the world, a country that only 13 years ago was bleeding into a civil war and that today is one of the fastest growing economies in the region, with a GDP that has increased by an average of 6.7% annually.
Adama Dramé poses in January 2020 in the Abattoir neighborhood (Abidjan) on the ruins of his electrician business, demolished in July 2018. Isabel Bonnet
Days before the Cup, Ouattara temporarily inaugurated one of his most anticipated projects: the fourth bridge in Abidjan, which connects the main districts of the city, for the construction of which more than 14,400 families were evicted, according to the Government.
Boribana, one of the neighborhoods most affected by the construction of the bridge, had already gone through several forced evictions and house destruction in 2019. Koné Kalilu is a spokesperson for those affected in the area and, like her parents and grandfather, grew up in Boribana .
At the end of 2019 she had to move due to the construction of the fourth bridge.
Today, along with 30 other families, she assures that she is still waiting for the Government to give her a new home.
“No one is against evictions if they allow the modernization of the country, but the population has to be relocated and receive adequate compensation,” she protests.
The Government of Ivory Coast did not respond to this newspaper's requests for comment.
Kalilu points out that some residents have not left the Boribana neighborhood because they expect compensation greater than what the Executive offers them.
“The Government tries to compensate based on the value of the destroyed habitat,” explains Irène Kassi-Djojo, professor at the Institute of Tropical Geography at the Félix Houphouët-Boigny University.
“The properties they are losing are precarious, so the compensation does not have an important value.”
A multiplying population
The high costs of living in Côte d'Ivoire and the high rate of urbanization, especially in Abidjan, make it difficult for those arriving from the villages to the economic capital to find a new safe and legal place to live.
Abidjan's population has grown from 2.87 million inhabitants in 1998 to more than 5.6 million, according to the 2021 General Population and Housing Census: a fifth of the country's population.
Residents of Adjouffou (Port-Bouet, Abidjan) pack their belongings following rumors that they will be evicted within 24 hours, on January 14, 2020. Four years later, the houses have still not been destroyed.
Many have left the area, others returned even though there is no longer running water.Isabel Bonnet
This is the case of Kambire Seni Anderson, who moved to Danga-Village, a neighborhood in the Cocody district, during the 2010 conflict. “I lost my job and my parents, I was lost,” says Anderson, now a youth leader in the neighborhood.
She moved to land considered at risk of collapse during the rains.
In 2018, the Government considered that in Abidjan there were almost 10,000 homes in risk areas that should be evacuated.
Since Anderson moved to Danga-Village, the neighborhood has been demolished at least four times.
Despite the constant threat of new forced evictions, many continue to return for lack of a better option.
“Those who can afford it are already gone,” Anderson acknowledges.
In one of the demolitions, in 2018, the Government claimed to have offered compensation to 77 families.
Anderson says he has not received any financial help.
Professor of Political Geography at the Montaigne University of Bordeaux, Christian Bouquet, who researched forced evictions with Irène Kassi-Djojo, explains that eviction practices only work when “they try to replace illegally occupied urban land with an infrastructure or a new building,” but that “they are less effective when it comes to getting people out of high-risk areas, because people return to the same place.”
For academic Kassi-Djojo, “problems are moving from one place to another.”
According to complaints from several NGOs, the Ivorian government often destroys homes and businesses for infrastructure projects without notice or compensation, according to a 2022 report from the US State Department.
Professor Kassi-Djodjo explains that the main reason why compensation is not received is because not all facilities, be they homes or businesses, qualify for this financial aid, as they are considered illegal occupations.
The Government's urbanization plans go beyond the construction of new infrastructure.
Sometimes, the lack of sanitation and the presence of anarchic facilities serve as justification for demolishing homes.
According to the Minister of Construction, Housing and Urbanization, in 2019 he planned to evict and destroy 1.2 million homes in 132 “precarious neighborhoods”, where approximately 20% of Abidjan's population resides, according to 2013 data from the United Nations Program. for Development (UNDP).
One of them is the Abattoir neighborhood, in the Port-Bouet district, where a demolition of homes occurred in June 2018 as part of a sanitation project, which was carried out without prior notice, according to community testimonies. affected.
Adama Dramé, a member of the New Abattoir Neighborhood Evicted Collective, relates that the evictions were carried out with heavy machinery and armed forces at five in the morning, leaving him and others homeless and without means of subsistence.
“Housing was built on this land under high-voltage towers, as well as sewage and drainage works, such as wastewater pipes from the slaughterhouse and rainwater pipes,” says the Government page about Abattoir.
“This exposed the occupants to risks such as epidemics, floods and fires.”
The more than 6,400 families referred to denied the accusations but did not receive a response, according to a report sent by the Collective of Evicted People of the Nuevo Abattoir Neighborhood to the Government.
Dramé has managed to rebuild his store on his own six years after the eviction, he says, but he never received compensation or an explanation.
10 years ago, about 15 minutes from the Abattoir neighborhood, in the same Port-Bouet district, a highway was built connecting the capital Abidjan with the city of Grand-Bassam, which involved the demolition of 4,400 homes housing 22,000 people, according to the Habitat International Coalition.
The Collective of Evicted People of the Abidjan-Bassam highway demanded compensation from the Government for the eviction two years later.
Professor Irène Kassi-Djojo, who was part of the team of experts who designed the urban development along that coastal strip, assures that the population was previously notified and received compensation, something that did not happen in the case of the Abattoir neighborhood.
“For me, the solution is to apply a housing policy aimed at the poorest,” summarizes Kassi-Djojo.
“Let us not forget that we are in a country in which the State has everything to do, everything is a priority, but it does not have the resources to do it.”
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