“The solutions are local, with a strong private sector” (Mathias Spaliviero, UN Habitat)

The head of the regional office of “UN Habitat”, on the occasion of World Habitat Day celebrated this Monday, participated in the panel organized by journalist Dieynaba Seydou Ba in Dakar. During the discussions, it was a question of discussing the constraints linked to housing in a context where demographics are increasingly rapid. But to resolve this equation of lack of housing in Senegal which, through successive regimes, still does not weaken, Mathias Spaliviero believes that we must find solutions where we look at more compact urban development. “The whole question of the carbon effect, of reducing pollution, the ecological question, energy efficiency, so all these are questions which must enter into the equation because we cannot think that we will find solutions for housing just by continuing to use cement, for example. And so, the whole question of local materials was raised. It is important to think about urban development.”

The State, according to Mr Spaliviero, should not build housing because it is not sustainable. “We have several examples of this, in South Africa, in Angola, I could cite others for sub-Saharan Africa, where the State has gone into enormous debt to build housing. So, the State must support the poorest households and those with fewer resources, with a subsidy system. But the construction itself must be done by companies specializing in this issue. By the private sector, a huge role, the cooperatives, that has been said. There are a lot of self-builds too, but which must be regulated in terms of quality. But I think that really, we have to look at the question from a global point of view.