Projects aiming at strengthening local institutions take into consideration economic, social, and cultural dynamism of individual and collective actors in a given area to promote and encourage economic development on the one hand, and to contribute to the building of appropriate infrastructures on the other hand. This includes establishing, improving, and maintaining collective equipment and services, protecting heritage and natural resources, and democratising public life. Also it works in close cooperation with French cultural institutions, improving the living conditions of disadvantaged city dwellers with the help of a special social development fund. Beyond tangible improvements, this approach sends out a message stressing the values of cooperation and international solidarity to civil society both in Africa and in France. It leads to development education in the North and permits the mobilisation of key actors adapted to the needs of the South.
Viable solutions can come from careful observation of how an urban society functions.
One aspect that we often fail to recognise is the coherence of societies. The daily reproduction of a destitute population attests to the existence of efficient models, which have developed in response to all the local parameters and which are therefore highly specific to each urban environment. This is why action must be based not only on a close knowledge of the field, but also on a positive attitude to the models encountered and an awareness of the need to support these models. The most sensible urban policy is to integrate municipal action into existing mechanisms and to support these mechanisms. It is essential to maintain a sense of the scale of things.