Entre contraintes et innovation : évolutions de la mobilité quotidienne dans les villes d’Afrique subsaharienne

Abstract

Within a context of deep poverty, how does one accomplish daily travel in Sub-Saharan African cities and which strategies for adaptation one is brought to develop? Far from a low uniform mobility level, household travel surveys show evidence of a diversity of mobilities, which are constrained, sometimes even hindered, and present different characteristics according to cities and individuals. Modes of transport are used in original ways and continuous adaptations and innovations are undertaken in the fields of both the supply of transport and the demand for transport. Two examples of this process are discussed in this paper. The first one deals with the great plasticity of transport services supplied by informal operators, as in the case of the motorbike-taxi in several cities. The second example concerns the relative sharing in the use of a rare asset, the personal car, which allows to extend the number of regular users towards a circle of occasional users. Both examples contribute to a two-fold movement, on the one hand the pooling of personal vehicles and in the other hand the individualisation of public transport. In conclusion, the benefits and the limits, in particular environmental limits, of these evolutions, lead to questioning the urban policies necessary for the regulation and organisation of daily mobilities.

Keywords

• adaptation
• african city
• car
• daily mobility
• lifestyle
• motorbike-taxi