‘Living beyond its present means’: World Bank push and local pushback over lowest-cost housing for postcolonial Dakar

In mid-1972, the World Bank approved its first loan for a sites and services project, selecting Senegal for the location based on the country's prior experience with similar schemes. Through a close reading of documents in the Bank archive, this article explores the serious differences that emerged between the Bank and Senegal in shaping the project, focusing on three issues: determining whether slum clearance or upgrading should be used to manage existing unregulated urban settlements; eliminating government subsidies for moderate-income housing schemes in order to shift investment to sites and services; and setting appropriate standards for the new Bank-sponsored neighbourhood. Moreover, the partners conceived the project quite differently: while the Bank was fixed on the successful implementation of its first sites and services scheme, for Senegal, this project was only one element of a larger vision for Dakar, which reflected the ambitions of the country's first postcolonial president, Léopold Senghor, and was given shape in the 1967 master plan developed by French urban planner Michel Écochard. The article examines the completed project through the contrasting evaluations produced by the project partners, and considers the complex power dynamics of the relationship between the Bank and Senegal as aid lender and recipient.