Jérôme Chenal in the "Forum of ideas": experts and adapted tools
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On December 14, the "Forum des Idées" hosted Dr. Jérôme Chenal on the issue of supporting African cities whose growth is explosive. Training African specialists with adapted tools that sustainably organize their cities? The question remains.
Jérôme Chenal introduced African Cities Lab, the name given to the project led by EPFL. It aims to create and share with African partners a platform for access to educational tools exclusively dedicated to African urban cities.
Like the major online course platforms, Coursera and Fun Mooc, African Cities Lab, whose physical platform will be hosted by an African campus in Sèmè City, is distinguished by training in urban planning only while opening the field to a wide variety of professionals, including sociologists, architects, lawyers, and urban planners who will act as direct actors in the management of African urban cities, continued Jérôme Chenal.
According to him, African cities need to build urban infrastructure. So, they build them supported by the financing of some international organizations. However, these cities need qualified human resources to make the most of these often inappropriate and useless infrastructures.
Jérôme Chenal adds that it is not unknown for Africa to be presented in great detail as a living symbol of suffering and profound misery, an image relayed by the Western media. This image, which the majority of people can only see from a distance, has created a strong apprehension, even in urban cities which are considered to be "urban hells".
He continues that difficulties abound in African cities, even situations of extreme poverty are common. However, there is so much potential, so much resourcefulness, so many beautiful things that make the urban machine run with the fuel of the immortal informal sector in the African economic landscape unlike the Swiss or Western model. Also, African cities are becoming urbanized and will be mostly urban in more or less time.
For Jérôme, the African Cities Lab project therefore consists of supporting the management centers of African cities, which must anticipate the extent of the ongoing urban explosion as well as their living space, which could, depending on demographics, double in just a few years.
To conclude, Jérôme Chenal emphasized that Africa may be the land of paradoxes, instability and poverty, but there are still innovations that people everywhere are invited to take a close look at, and even to import to their own countries, why not? Witness the rapid availability of Internet connection in Douala, Cameroon. A good example for an urban city in the process of urbanization.
Watch the interview on: https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/forum/video/forum-des-idees-lepfl-au-chevet-des-villes-africaines?urn=urn:rts:video:11825581