Cases Allemandes

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Cases Allemandes (also: Lycée La Fontaine ) was an informal settlement in the urban area of Niamey in Niger .

history

The area of ​​the later settlement in the Plateau district originally belonged to the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany . The embassy had prefabricated bungalows built here on 39 plots to accommodate its own citizens who temporarily stayed in the city. The name Cases Allemandes , French for “German houses”, refers to these bungalows. The alternative place name Lycée Lafontaine is derived from the proximity to the school of the same name Lycée La Fontaine .

In 1987 the German embassy sold the site to the Nigerien state. The state initially left it to teachers and researchers at Niamey University . In response to a strike at the university that outraged the government, university employees were unceremoniously withdrawn from use. The now unused property owned by the state area was of working as guards men occupied , who built piece by piece straw huts here. As in other informal settlements in Niamey, the design of the straw hut enabled it to be dismantled quickly and rebuilt elsewhere if the police should evict the settlers. Soon prostitutes and artisans from the nearby tourist area of Château 1 also settled in Cases Allemandes . The poor settlement in the middle of the rich Plateau area was ethnically mixed. In addition to Tuareg and Wodaabe , Zarma and Hausa lived here . In 1997, 87 households were counted, in 2002 already 503 households were counted. The UNICEF built a primary school for the children of Cases Allemandes.

There were repeated major fires, for example in December 1997 and on February 17, 2003, when 204 straw huts burned down. The last fire was the reason for Niamey Bibata Niandou Barry, then Prefect President , to set a three-day ultimatum to evacuate the settlement. Police were supposed to prevent the burned down huts from being rebuilt. Among other things, an interview with one of the wives of President Mamadou Tandja prevented the eviction for the time being. This only came about in May 2008. From June 2015, a five-star hotel was built in place of Cases Allemandes.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Hamadou Issaka: L'habitat informel dans les villes d'Afrique subsaharienne francophone à travers l'exemple de Niamey (Niger) . Thesis. Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, Pau 2007, Chapitre 5.2.2 L'habitat informel sur domaine privé ( memoireonline.com [accessed April 21, 2019]).
  2. ↑ a b c d Patrick Gilliard: L'extrême pauvreté au Niger. Mendier ou mourir? Karthala, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-84586-629-1 , p. 143 and 179 .
  3. ↑ Audrey Boucksom: Arts "touristiques" en Afrique et consommateurs occidentaux. Le cas de l'artisanat d'art au Niger . Thèse de doctorat. Université Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 2009, p. 51 ( tel.archives-ouvertes.fr [PDF; accessed April 26, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Hamadou Issaka: L'habitat informel dans les villes d'Afrique subsaharienne francophone à travers l'exemple de Niamey (Niger) . Thesis. Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, Pau 2007, Chapitre 7.2.2 Le sous-équipement des quartiers ( memoireonline.com [accessed April 21, 2019]).
  5. ↑ D. Touraoua: En finir avec l'anarchy . In: Sahel Dimanche . No. 1287 , May 16, 2008, p. 11 .
  6. ↑ Agence UA 2019: Visite des chantiers à l'intention des médias. In: Niamey Soir. March 7, 2018, accessed April 26, 2019 (French).

Coordinates: 13 ° 31 '  N , 2 ° 6'  E