How do we begin to upgrade Africa’s informal settlements in achievable but meaningful ways? These spaces are an almost ubiquitous feature of African cities. With a history of patchy development, and in the face of the global trend towards urbanisation, African people have made inroads into urban centres by establishing informal settlements.
Informal settlements offer cheap and basic homes in close proximity to jobs and opportunities – but often their informal nature introduces challenges. These include overcrowding, lack of sanitation and sewage infrastructure, limited service provision, and sometimes significant safety and security risks. An additional challenge is that many of the civil servants who are tasked with upgrading these areas no longer reside in them (and possibly never did) or engage with the settlement residents – creating a top-down policymaking process that often disregards the real needs of the very people and areas they seek to service.
It is within this context that Dr Madelein Stoffberg is working to flip the story, collecting data and feeding it upwards – from communities to the public sector. She is the principal investigator of a LIRA-funded research initiative called “Community led upgrading of informal settlements in cities in Namibia and Zambia”, focusing on the cities of Windhoek and Gobabis (Namibia), Lusaka (Zambia) – and in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.
As a lecturer at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, Stoffberg saw first-hand the crisis of housing in Namibia where – according to the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia – 995 000 people live in about 228 000 shacks across 308 informal settlements in urban areas, out of a population estimate of 2,5 million.
Her team brings together Namibian and Zambian academics (from various fields, including architecture and spatial production, housing, town planning, and urban development), non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers – Namibia Housing Action Group and People’s Processes for Poverty and Housing (Zambia) – and community members. Together they are mapping stakeholders and existing upgrade programmes, and creating a platform for people to tell their stories in the form of visual and spoken narratives.
"Aquests assentaments estan creixent i hi ha moltes maneres diferents d'abordar-ho. La nostra idea era mirar-ho des d'una perspectiva comunitària. La política és important, però no sempre té en compte les persones que realment viuen en aquestes situacions", diu Stoffberg.
A Windhoek, l'equip va organitzar un laboratori d'aprenentatge anomenat "Urban Dream", que es va organitzar conjuntament amb els socis de les ONG i els líders de la comunitat.
"Llavors vam formar sis grups diferents dirigits pels líders de la comunitat, cadascun amb la tasca d'utilitzar un mitjà diferent per descriure els somnis urbans d'aquestes comunitats: on són ara i cap a on els agradaria anar en el futur", explica Stoffberg.
Els sis mitjans eren:
"Vam rebre un art increïble que representa les condicions de vida. La fotografia també va ser especialment interessant, ja que les imatges capturades no només se centraven en aspectes negatius dels assentaments informals, sinó també en exemples en què les comunitats ja havien intentat millorar les seves condicions canviant coses com el drenatge d'aigua. És evident que les comunitats estan intentant abordar les seves pròpies preocupacions i trobar solucions innovadores".
"Els resultats", diu Stoffberg, "definitivament no són tradicionals, però s'estan construint cap a una col·lecció polifacètica de narracions d'experiències viscudes. El següent pas és traduir-les en solucions, i aquestes serien conscients de les restriccions i possibilitats de la política municipal".
The team is now, in 2019, undertaking the same narrative collection process in Lusaka. In Gobabis, the focus is on production of a case study, examining a community-led upgrade project that has already been implemented.
El govern és un altre actor d'importància crítica, però implicar-los en el procés no sempre ha estat tan senzill com s'esperava. "Vam començar el projecte amb la intenció de veure com podem associar-nos amb el govern", diu Stoffberg.
"No obstant això, ens hem trobat amb un obstacle perquè el municipi ha de respondre davant d'altres líders i circumscripcions, inclòs el govern nacional, i això afegeix capes de complexitat al projecte".
Representatives of Windhoek city government did participate in early workshops, first on data collection methods, and later on unpacking said data. That was then followed by a meeting with the management of the Windhoek municipality to understand the upgrade steps that they are following and their vision for these spaces. “Unfortunately at this point, it was clear that they were not keen on a direct relationship with us. So we changed back to primarily engaging with the community (as described above). With these narratives, we hope to describe the community’s concerns better, and use them to convince (and communicate with) the public sector stakeholders.”
Of course, informal settlements are not all the same, and this necessitates a tailored approach. “There are significant differences in both the municipalities and policies governing informal settlements in Windhoek and Lusaka, as well as in the structure of their informal settlements.”
"Qualsevol actualització planificada ha de començar per comprendre els problemes en el context i després treballar des de l'ampli a l'específic", afegeix. "Sovint, el problema principal és la seguretat de la tinença per als residents. A continuació, hem d'entendre les polítiques específiques en joc. Després d'això, podríem passar a proposar canvis en coses com ara la disposició i la demarcació, i només llavors es pot mirar l'habitatge en si i millorar-ho".
At every level, we know that we need to incorporate the community voice. Currently, they are not heard. It might be easier to work purely from a policy perspective, but then we wouldn’t be addressing the problem properly.