Ivory Coast has taken steps to rehouse residents of the two worst-hit areas near Abidjan, who were recently by mass evictions and demolitions of their homes, the government said Wednesday.
Spokesman Amadou Coulibaly said the programme had been launched “to support people affected by displacement (evictions) and to prevent them from being resettled in new high-risk areas”.
The government will fund 250,000 CFA francs ($417) per house, totalling 697 million CFA francs, Coulibaly added following a cabinet meeting.
The scheme will cover residents of the Boribana and Gesco n neighbourhoods but “no neighbourhood will be left behind”, he said.
Officials had previously said that the “unsanitary” housing, in a poor district of Abidjan, had been torn down on public health grounds.
The demolished neighbourhoods are indicative of rampant urbanisation in the capital, whose population mushroomed from three million to six million between 1998 and 2021, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
Abidjan “has around thirty shantytowns located in high-risk areas and permanently exposed to floods and landslides, which have caused the death of more than 340 people since 2005”, Coulibaly said.
“Any new precarious neighbourhoods will be demolished,” he added.
The government also announced the provision of further construction aid and plots with a 20-25-year lease at a rent of 10,000 CFA francs per month.
No date for the implementation of these measures was given.