IMPROVING HETEROGENEOUS SOCIO-TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE Insights from an experiment on plastic waste collection in the runoff water gullies of Yaounde, Cameroon.

De Visscher, Jean-Philippe
(2023) Conference on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research for sustainable development — Location: Louvain-la-Neuve (23.November.2023)

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The term "Elobi" refers to the many informal settlements that occupy the bottom of the multiple valleys of Yaoundé, Cameroon. Generally speaking, these neighborhoods present numerous problems of flooding, landslides and insalubrity (UNHabitat, 2007; Datcheu, 2018), caused in particular by the plastic waste clogging the drainage networks. These drainage networks - like the majority of service and equipment networks through which inhabitants cope with everyday necessities - are heterogeneous infrastructure configurations (Lawhon et al. 2018) produced, managed and transformed over the course of multiple interactions between upper and lower valley inhabitants, new arrivals, neighbors, families, tontines, ethnic groups, block and neighborhood chiefs, technical services, town halls, etc. . This article presents and puts into perspective the results of several design workshops dedicated to this issue, organized between 2018 and 2023 as part of a partnership between ESSACA (Ecole Spéciale Supérieure d'Architecture du Cameroun, Cameroon) and LOCI-UCLouvain. Firstly, a field survey in the form of a short documentary film provides an understanding of the nuisances and blockages experienced by the inhabitants of a district representative of the Elobis problem. The result is a particular focus on the problems caused by the accumulation of waste that impedes the proper flow of water in drains and watercourses. Secondly, a cartographic analysis develops a novel proposal for the administrative division of the city into sub-watersheds. In addition, projects by architecture students illustrate how these new subdivisions would enable new water and waste management systems to be set up, and how residents and administrations could be made more aware of their responsibilities. Lastly, the development of a prototype system for collecting waste in the gutters initiated a partnership between ESSACA and the Yaoundé IV district, with the aim of experimenting with rapid, cost-effective solutions co-managed by the district and its residents. From a technical point of view, it is still too early to assess the effectiveness of the proposed waste collection system. Similarly, on a political and social level, it is too early to measure the extent to which this scheme is enabling new forms of collaboration between technical services, local leaders, residents' groups and the university. Nevertheless, on a theoretical level, these experiments illustrate a possible way forward for implementing policies to improve infrastructures that transcend the divide between formal and informal networks (Simone, 2010). Since these infrastructures are the product of complex and evolving socio-technical practices (Mac Farlane and Silver 2017), the best way to transform them is to allow new practices to emerge. In other words, rather than seeking to plan the informal, our experiments illustrate why and how to design tools and representations that make new agencies possible. In this way, our experiments also highlight the relevance of methods derived from Design Thinking, Transition Managment and Transdisciplinary Research for devising new policies to improve infrastructure in cities dominated by informality such as Yaoundé.
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De Visscher, J.-P. (2023). IMPROVING HETEROGENEOUS SOCIO-TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE Insights from an experiment on plastic waste collection in the runoff water gullies of Yaounde, Cameroon. Conference on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research for sustainable development, Louvain-la-Neuve. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/25014