Earlier this year, the Human Rights Watch published a report revealing that over 20,000 people would have been forcibly evicted in Conakry between February and May 2019. Bulldozers and other heavy machinery demolished the buildings to free the land for government ministries, foreign embassies, businesses, and other public works. “The Guinean government hasn’t just demolished homes, it has damaged peoples’ lives and livelihoods,” said Corinne Dufka, West Africa director at Human Rights Watch in a press release.
Forced evictions are, however, not exclusive to Guinea. Demolitions and evictions throughout the national territory, without guarantee of rehousing to all those concerned, have become an ongoing issue in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Ghana, vendors were evicted from downtown Accra in 2010 and a project to redevelop the rail system around the country with the support of the Chinese government in 2013, led to more evictions. In Cameroon, 300 indigenous people were evicted using bulldozers to expand the Catholic University in Bamenda in 2014.
In August 2013, President Alassane Ouattara’s plan to build the Abidjan-Grand-Bassam highway and the plan to embellish the littoral led the economic capital Abidjan to massive evictions. Ever since then, there has been an increase in the speed and frequency of residence destruction. Their main targets are local markets and marginalized neighbourhoods.