Gender and the Cities: The Two Rival Sisters 

Contextualising the essay:

More than sixty years after independence, Dakar and Abidjan still look like "beautiful young women [who, however] grew up too fast", in the words of André Guillerme and Babou Bazié, the main organisers of a seminar on how to renovate African cities, back in 1995. Despite various pitfalls, the cities are trying to meet the challenge of sustainable development, but also that of social inclusion in an ecosystem characterised by the plurality of players, the complexity of the issues and challenges, and the shortage of resources.

The gender dimension emerges through the figures of Lirane in Abidjan and Amina in Dakar - young women whose careers in modern transport mark a clear break from the informal roles once assigned to them. Lirane’s story also reflects the aspirations and tensions faced by city girls, including intergenerational conflicts, with her daughter Hawa acting as a symbolic bridge to her own mother, Bija. Amina’s trajectory sheds light on questions of social inclusion, particularly through her connection to the "Cité des-Sans-Vergogne", a nod to Dakar’s infamous "Cité des-Imbéciles" (City of Fools).

Elsewhere, artistic expression in public space-particularly through street art-evokes a vision of the African city as not only a site of progress and comfort, but also of creativity and joy. It points toward an urban future shaped by inclusive design, thoughtful implementation, and stronger planning tools.

The Two Rival Sisters

As always, March was a hot month. However, the end of the dry season was accompanied by unusual rainfall for this time of year. The experts keep linking this to climate change.

Despite all this, the city was looking remarkably beautiful after years of hardship that had spared no one.

Bija, queen among queens, once scrutinised like a supermodel, was recovering from a traumatic past that she and her family hoped to put behind her for good. The big city was rebuilding itself through major development work. The infrastructure programmes were becoming better thought through and more focused on meeting the needs of the inhabitants. The engineer listened more to the sociologist. Architects deigned to talk to town planners. The hygienist, the doctor and the environmentalist were invited to the great masses held with the partners to decide, plan and act together.

In this city that was regaining its colour and taste for life, Lirane, Bija's daughter, was looking for her way. At the age of twenty-five, the young girl exasperated her mother with her independent spirit and life choices that were the opposite of what her mother dreamed for her. She had graduated from the prestigious Ecole Supérieure de Formation Maritime (ESFORM)1. But she was still unemployed. Despite compulsory practical training to obtain the rank of Capitaine au Long Cours, her dream of joining the prestigious Compagnie de Transport Fluvial (COTRAF2) remained unfulfilled. Her mother Bija certainly had extensive connections throughout the state apparatus and could have facilitated matters. But she never intervened, not because she was averse to doing so, but simply because she harboured the secret hope that her favourite daughter would join her in running her flourishing fabric business.

Her innumerable shops in the main avenues and famous hotels as well as in the markets of the working-class districts brought in enough for her not to deign to see her daughter take up salaried employment, even if it was in the management of the river-lagoon shipping company. For Bija, this job would be no less miserable than that of the thousands of girls who had come from the north to sell a variety of small goods, sometimes on the sly, in neighbourhoods, stations and markets.

Lirane didn't care. She had left home as soon as she had finished her A-levels. She had been admitted to ESFORM with flying colours. Hawa, the fruit of a fleeting love affair with a wild and immature fellow student, is nonetheless the apple of her eye. Bija had adopted her from birth, and her odd jobs enabled her to make a modest contribution to her daughter's care while she waited for her big break at COTRAF.

And that's exactly what happened this morning. A phone call from a manager, after some cold greetings, announced that she had been recruited. The services conceded to the company were expanding with the government's decision to make greater use of the lagoon to increase the public transport offer. Frequent trials on fixed-term contracts had long positioned Lirane as a potential bus captain. Now her dream was coming true.

She was on the way to doing as well as her cousin, Amina, which would no doubt not displease Bija, as her rivalry with her sister, Nara, was still very much alive despite the years and the distance.

Nara, another queen among queens and the eldest daughter of the family refuses to grow old. She still sees herself, and rightly so, as a beautiful young woman. But she grew up too fast. At one point, she was very tired. She looked terrible. But she always managed to remain proud and dignified, with the support of her husband. When she complained about the wear and tear of her clothes, the snags in her underwear, when she wanted to hide her misery and wrinkles, her husband called in the best specialists who, each in their own field, intervened with all their goodwill and expertise. Each one therefore operated, on request, in isolation, often in a hurry, disturbing the surrounding life. And, of course, each one demanded their fees, which were always higher, and the husband, to prove that he was still in love, paid without counting the cost.

Today, Nara no longer wants to suffer to be beautiful. A good manager of her purse, she wants to get value for money and save as much as possible to meet the ever-increasing needs of the household. That's why she has her own General Practitioner, the renowned Dr Badou Bazié, a suitably competent doctor who keeps her health records up to date. And, to top it all off, his quality of life has improved too.

In her town, as in Bija's, the sociologist, urban planner, hygienist, doctor and environmentalist are no longer whispering. They are speaking out loud and clear. Artists are also having a field day. The decorative frescoes on the walls separating the railway tracks and the Cité des Sans-Vergognes delighted Amina every time she passed them from her cockpit on TURBAN, the Train Urbain de Banlieue.3 This jewel of modern transport passed through the shanty town which, like the Sphinx, was still being reborn from the many attempts to eradicate it by the authorities, both municipal and central. Musicians, many of them from the district, enlivened the millions of daily users of public transport, now convinced of its real advantages over private motorised transport. The city as a whole, all year round, puts on a show of cultural events, from local to national and international.

The ravishing Amina was the pride of Nara. The fact that she was chosen to escort the country's highest authorities and their distinguished guests to the inauguration of TURBAN reinforced this feeling. Her professionalism, her ideals and her commitment to fairness and justice, particularly for the promotion of women, have made her the undisputed leader of the powerful Syndicat Autonome des Professionnels des Rails (SAPR)4.

She also had a major influence on her cousin Lirane. Lirane certainly followed her aspirations and stood up to her powerful mother. But she still harboured secret hopes of a rapprochement with Bija, which had already begun when Hawa was born.

Her recruitment as a long-distance captain to command the Akwaba-Line, the latest generation of bus-boats acquired by COTRAF, would certainly flatter a few egos, which Bija would be happy to make her sister, Nara, feel.

Having read the notification, Bija dialled Nara's number, who immediately picked up. Without even saying hello, she told her sister:

“Hallelujah, your prayers are answered. Lirane is the Commander of the Akwaba-Line.”

“Hallelujah," she replied.

And she hung up.