Paving the City of Dakar by Means of High Intensity Manpower Techniques

Background Information

Dakar, like all large capital cities in Africa, is confronted with problems in town planning. From its position as the economic capital of Senegal, the city is a destination for massive migration which emphasizes urban poverty. Dakar has witnessed the spoiling of its environment and riotous occupation of its thoroughfare giving birth to suburban insalubrity whereby unemployment constitutes a real plague for the youth of the city. The unemployment rate is 15 percent in Dakar. The paving program aims to modernize and embellish the city through generating more than 1,500 new positions of employment. This project is a necessity as it aims to organize and rebalance the distribution of networks and facilities in the city. The program responds to a need for parallel structuring in the urban planning of the city of Dakar.

Goals of the Initiative

The program aims at improving the environment and living conditions for citizens through the creation of productive jobs, enhancing living standards, developing public spiritedness among citizens, embellishing and cleaning the city, fighting against sanding and facilitating urban mobility.

Parties and Partners of the Initiative and Resources Used for Implementation

The paving program is entirely supported by the City of Dakar, which assures its funding. It is a not-for-profit project that the City of Dakar pilots through its technical services, especially the Direction of Urban Development and the Paving Management Unit that coordinates with the executing company, the Beli Sasha Group. From achievements, the city hopes to attract partners that will attend to them.

Innovation for the Initiative

The project is revolutionary in that it is the first time in Senegal that such a program has led from the creation to taking charge of the training itself. Moreover, the quality of manufactured paving stones did not exist in Senegal before. The technology was imported from Burkina Faso, a country that has much progress in this domain.

The innovative aspect of the project resides in the use of high intensity manpower techniques (HIM). This approach has already proved itself in Senegal through many projects that have created a significant number of jobs for underprivileged classes.

The paving of the city of Dakar is an urban development project which is in keeping with a general policy entitled Dakar Horizon 2025. The target is to make Dakar a modern town by being in total adequate with the growth strategies and poverty reduction of Africa.

As part of this project, authorities were enthusiastic with the idea of choosing a concept sold by the Beli Sasha Group through the exchange of production technology and the layering of vibrated paving stones by the use of HIM techniques. Studying results obtained in Burkina Faso through using this technique have facilitated their adoption in Dakar.