[03] Pikine, the largest slum in the vicinity of Dakar

The Pikine slum on the outskirts of Dakar is huge and growing rapidly. Today it has about 850,000 inhabitants. This figure is expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2020. This makes it by far the largest slum in Sénégal. Benoît Dôme: 'You can’t compare Pikine with Paraisópolis in Brazil, where we developed our first project. Pikine covers a much larger area but it is much less densely built up. Most people who live in the slum have moved in from the countryside to try their luck in the city. But don’t picture it as a camp; the houses are fixed brick structures and people come to Pikine to live permanently. Living conditions are not good. The houses are very small and the average size of the family living in them is around eight people. Moreover, these inhabitants are on the edge of society — they are not necessarily authorized to live there nor, in many cases, is their access to electricity legal.'