Paper long abstract:

For many decades now most African states have been challenged with rapid urbanisation rates fuelled by rural-urban migration processes and natural population growth at the same time, resulting in millions of people living in precarious housing conditions. The ongoing massive, quantitative as well as qualitative housing crisis has long-term negative consequences both for the people directly affected and for societal development processes in general.

Adequate housing is an elementary basic need. Therefore, the right to adequate housing and shelter had been embodied in the Human Rights Declaration of the United Nations of 1948, and was confirmed again in the Habitat Agenda 1996. Besides its mere protective function housing fulfils a socio-cultural function and reflects the expression of everyday life, comfort and aesthetics on individual and group level. Although the quality of a dwelling can be described by objective indicators, the same material and immaterial conditions can be evaluated completely different through the filter of subjectively and culturally varying perception models and underlying individual needs and demands.

The paper will raise two major questions concerned with adequacy:

1. How do people want to live? What housing for whom?

2. How can people get there? Which programmes are available to support urban marginal groups in their struggle for better housing?

Following the conceptual discussion, both questions shall be exemplified in two more presentations of this panel.