An incubator in Douala? The UFI network talks with the Fabrique Collective!
On Friday 1 October 2021, the network of urban nurseries organised an exchange between the Abidjan and Dakar nurseries and the Fabrique Collective, an association set up in 2020 by students after an initial trip to Douala in 2019, during which a project to develop the area around the Kondi drain was drawn up in conjunction with the Douala Urban Community and the Agence française de développement.
Alongside their apprenticeship course, Fabrique Collective students then worked on the design of this project before travelling to the site in March 2021 to coordinate the work. The project involved creating landscaping (site clean-up, landscaping plan, street furniture, tree-lined walkway etc.) along the Kondi drain in Douala as well as a recycling centre on the drain. The latter took the form of a bridge-building on the drain for the collection and sorting of waste recovered from the drain, mainly plastic bottles. The plastic waste is then collected in bins for processing by local companies.
In addition to building the planned facilities, the Fabrique Collective has also been working with local partners - the Douala Urban Community, local associations and private waste collection and recycling companies - on the longer-term management and maintenance of these structures. A partnership agreement is currently being drawn up by the Douala Urban Community.
Today, the Fabrique Collective, its partners in Douala and AFD are working on setting up the next phase of the project. The association has therefore asked the network of urban incubators for support in this process, particularly in developing tools and methods for co-design and social intermediation of projects.
It was against this backdrop that the nursery network invited the Fabrique Collective to talk to the urban nurseries in Dakar and Abidjan, which started up in mid-2020. The nurserymen presented the association with the experiences, tools and co-design methods deployed on the various sites where they are active. Following these presentations, discussions took place to explore a number of aspects of the nurseries' approach. These included the question of the spontaneous evolution of the uses of the co-designed facilities; the relationship with local players throughout the co-design process; the development of local resources, craftsmen and materials, by the nurseries, and so on.
These initial exchanges can then lead to personalised support (new thematic exchanges; exchange missions; advisory support for project preparation, etc.) from the incubator network as part of the set-up phase of the future project led by the Fabrique Collective and its local partners, depending on their needs.