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Abstract
Current debates about slums centre on the growing inequality brought about by economic globalisation. Within this context, slums are typically viewed as bounded units within the city emphasising differentiation with other neighbourhoods. This paper questions whether a focus exclusively on slums is useful for the examination of the provision of water, sanitation and health in African cities and suggests a complementary perspective emphasising urban interconnectedness. Using a comparative case study approach, it examines responses to environmental conditions in urban as well as rural contexts along drainage channels in Abidjan, West Africa. The paper traces linkages on various and partly interrelated analytical levels: spatial, material, social, political, local, national and international. Such an analysis of multi-level dynamics between stakeholders contributes to a better understanding of slums as a phenomenon of urbanisation.
Les débats actuels sur les bidonvilles sont centrés sur les inégalités croissantes induites par la globalisation. Dans ce contexte, les bidonvilles sont habituellement considérés comme des espaces délimités à l'intérieur de la ville, avec une forte différenciation vis-à-vis des autres quartiers. Dans cet article, on se demande s'il est utile de mettre spécifiquement l'accent sur les bidonvilles pour l'étude de l'approvisionnement en eau, des installations sanitaires et des services de santé dans les villes africaines. Il suggère une perspective complémentaire mettant l'accent sur l'interconnectivité urbaine. A partir d'une étude de cas comparative, il examine les réponses aux problèmes environnementaux dans un contexte aussi bien urbain que rural, le long des canaux de drainage, à Abidjan en Afrique de l'Ouest. L'article identifie des imbrications plus ou moins fortes entre divers niveaux analytiques: spatial, matériel, social, politique, local, national et international. Une telle analyse de la dynamique à plusieurs niveaux entre les acteurs contribue à une meilleure compréhension du rôle des bidonvilles en tant que phénomène d'urbanisation.
Notes
1. We would like to thank the local leaders and residents of our study areas for their participation in our investigation. We are also grateful to our local guides, field assistants, supervisors, interviewers and the data entry staff for their commitment to work under often difficult conditions. Our colleagues of the Ivorian NCCR team, A.S. Kouadio, A. Koné, M. Doumbia and C. Kablan, and the Swiss NCCR team, R. Bossart and K. Wyss, have given us intellectual and practical support also in writing this paper. We highly appreciate the continuous support of the Municipality of Yopougon and the Ministry of Research of the Côte d'Ivoire. The Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency funded the study through the ‘NCCR North-South research programme: Research Partnerships for Mitigating Syndromes of Global Change’, in particular the Individual Project 4 ‘Health and Well-being’.
2. In the quartiers précaires, extended ethnographic research was complemented by key informant interviews with representatives of the following institutions: the Environmental Department of the Ministry of Urbanization, the Environmental Department of the District of Abidjan, the Sanitary and Hygiene Department of the Municipality of Yopougon. In-depth interviews were held with at least three representatives of the following social groups in each of the selected quartiers précaires: community leaders, women's associations, young people's associations, the informal waste collecting association in the municipality of Yopougon, the NGOs ASAPSU and SOLIDARITE 2000. The household survey covered 1,800 households.
In the peri-urban villages, Rapid Ethnographic Procedures were complemented by in-depth interviews with selected village leaders, such as the leader of the fishermen, the owner of a fish pond and the physician in the community health centre. In each of the three villages, three focus group discussions were organised with women, the young age group and the community leaders. The household survey covered 275 households.
3. There is a controversy in the Côte d'Ivoire whether the Dioula should be called ‘ethnic group’ – but they are commonly referred to as such.
4. From independence in 1960 until the death in 1993 of its first president, Felix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d'Ivoire maintained political stability while many countries in the region were undergoing repeated military coups. Houphouët-Boigny's successor, Henri Konan Bédié, followed in his footsteps, but government corruption and mismanagement led to steep reductions in foreign aid in 1998 and in 1999 to the military coup of General Robert Guéi. A year later, Guéi held elections but excluded the prominent opposition leader from the North, Alassane Ouattra. Popular protest forced Guéi to step aside and brought Laurent Gbagbo into power. In Sept. 2002, Gbagbo's opponents launched a failed coup attempt, and rebel forces claimed the northern half of the country. Up to now ethnically-charged issues that sparked the civil war, such as land reform and grounds for nationality, remain unresolved. Tensions remain high between Gbagbo and rebel leaders who hold control over the northern regions. Several thousand French, West African and UN troops remain in Côte d'Ivoire to maintain peace and facilitate the disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation process. (AG Friedensforschung an der Uni Kassel, Citation2004; World Factbook, Citation2004; Mehler, Citation2004).
5. About 10 years ago, the residents of these settlements made up 160,523 of the estimated total population 374, 523 of Yopougon (Collignon et al., 2000: 7–8). We assume that the proportion has remained similar, even though the total population of Yopougon has increased to about one million.
6. Ebrié is a foreign denomination given to them by the Abouré meaning ‘dirty people’. Their self designation was Tchaman, ‘the chosen ones’ (Diabaté and Kodjo, Citation1990). Since colonial times, the administration adopted the term ‘Ebrié’ as official designation. Among scholars too there seems to be some confusion concerning the naming and classification of the lagoon people: ‘Ivorian scholars refer to the Lagoon peoples as “Akan”, or kotoko, classifying them with the Anyi, Baoulé, Abron, and the people of southern Ghana. All the ethnic groups of the Ivory Coast considered “Akan” by these francophone authorities speak Western Kwa languages, and most claim to have migrated into their present homelands from an original homeland to the east. Unfortunately, Anglophone researchers generally do not include the Lagoon peoples in their discussion of “Akan” groups, since most use the term to refer to speakers of Volta-Comoe languages, Lagoon languages form a different branch of Western Kwa’ (Visona, Citation1983: 11–12).
7. 75% of the households used latrines, 25% a flush toilet; of these 84% were connected to self-made cesspits and 8% to the drainage channels. 37% of the households paid a company to empty the cesspit, 17% engaged to informal service providers.
8. Kitchen and bathroom water was mainly poured into public space (54% and 53%), in pits (20% and 21%), the drainage channel (19%) or the courtyard (5% or 7%). Bathroom water most commonly went into the pit (82%) or any of the other options.
9. About half of the households reported disposing of their garbage in the drainage channels (46%) or in public spaces (54%). Some also use big garbage bins for collection by garbage trucks (22%). Another study suggested that the lack of public infrastructure in Yopougon led to the rise of many private initiatives, for example informal waste collection services (Komenan, Citation1995). According to our data, informal waste collectors or ‘precollectors’ (précollecteurs) reached about a fifth of the households (21%) in the habitats précaires, and they are very popular in neighbouring residential areas.
10. The majority of the households are equipped with flush toilets (45%); others use VIP latrines (17%) or simple latrines (5%). A rather large proportion of the villagers rely on the facilities of their neighbours or go to the beach (33%). The latrines and toilets are not connected to sewers. They usually empty into self-made pits (77%), others directly into the lagoon.
11. Most households dispose of their garbage in the lagoon (49%), in the channel (4%) or in public space around the house (23%). Others used bins to store household waste for collection (20%) or burnt the rubbish (4%).
12. It is a well-known scientific fact that human and household waste turns into a serious health risk if it contaminates water used for drinking, washing and cooking. Studies in many urban and peri-urban areas of low-income countries have demonstrated that deficiencies concerning drainage and storm water management lead to water- and sanitation-related health problems (Parkinson, Citation2003; Parkinson and Tayler, Citation2003). The risk of wastewater from latrines and toilets getting mixed with surface water and groundwater exist in rural areas but becomes an even more pressing environmental concern in urban areas, where large numbers of people live in a limited space. This has also been documented by previous research in cities of West Africa, for instance in Ouagadougou (Cissé, Citation1997) and Accra (McGranahan and Songsore, Citation1996; McGranahan et al., Citation2001). In addition to micro-biological pathogens, chemical pollutants pose serious hazards to health (McMichael, Citation2000). Environmental interactions between waste and water make it nearly impossible to disentangle the two in terms of their relative importance for health. Scientific knowledge about the relative contribution of specific interventions to the reduction of diarrhoeal illness has increased over the past decade. Still, it makes sense to speak of a ‘water-waste-complex’ (Stephens Citation1996), because health problems caused by the water supply system, sanitation and garbage collection are closely interlinked and interact synergistically.
13. From 1950 to 2000, Abidjan grew more than twenty-fold (UN-Habitat, Citation2003a: 109).
14. Over the past decade, knowledge on urban health problems has greatly increased (Harpham and Tanner, Citation1995; Atkinson et al., Citation1996), and new priorities have emerged (Harpham and Molyneux, Citation2001; Obrist and Eeuwijk, Citation2003; Obrist, 2006). In addition to environmental issues, injuries, accidents and violence as well as mental health problems claim increasing interest, and so do concepts like ‘equity’, with reference to particular population sub-groups like women, the poor or the elderly, and ‘governance’, especially with regard to the role of various provider groups in health systems characterised by a public-private mix.
15. On the one hand, there are locally produced ‘universal’ remedies suggesting a foreign origin with names like ‘Panacée d'Orient’ or ‘Super Ginseng, super sang’ (Super Ginseng, super blood). On the other hand, there are products imported from Ghana very similar to the Ivorian ones, such as ‘Lion Blood Tonic’. All are based on mixtures of herbal medicine.
16. As Chief Dago explained (pers comm Stephanie Granado): ‘Each ethnic group should have its chief, that is, the Agni, Bété and others. Then all the chiefs of the ethnic groups get together and elect only one (as president).’ This kind of arrangement, up to now, seems to be unimaginable on the national level, as the political power struggle for presidency shows.
17. This is a technical term of anthropology and means that men's society is divided into grades defined by age.
18. The PAMS form a component of the NCCR North-South to test and implement strategies for mitigating the effect of global change on natural resources and human livelihood. PAMS are considered as an effective vehicle for knowledge and technology transfer. They rely on a demand-oriented approach rooted in the partnership with actor groups in the research sites. PAMS are small, short-term projects and allow research teams to respond flexibly and pragmatically to mitigation opportunities and innovative ideas emerging during the research process.