Poverty and Urban Transport, Learning from African Cities

This paper is based mainly on a report which was prepared by the author and Lourdes Diaz (Let, Lyon) through Sitrass association, for the World Bank on the theme Poverty and urban transport, French experience and developing cities (september 2000). Poverty alleviation programms are more and more presented as the present challenge for the development policies, so that the question is emerging about the contribution of urban transport sector to achieve such an aim. The analysis of experience of developing cities in Africa makes it possible to draw several conclusions, which are defined once it was acknowledged that there is a vast range of situations and that there is really no single transposable solution just as it is from one city to another. The African cities which were analysed in this study were Cairo, Dakar, Ouagadougou, Tunis. It was completed by the consideration of French experience, which will not be developed here. 1- Urban poverty and exclusion: from a restrained definition to an extended one If the level of economic resources was used for long as the only reference to determine poverty, the consensus on the multi-dimensional characteristics of poverty is under way both in the countries from the South and the North. There is no single definition of poverty but in general it can b