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Voila la fin du texte à corriger:
This is the end of the text that I wrote . Can you correct my bad language, please?


The Author’s thesis and the reader’s opinion:


Sub-Saharan Africa knew “dramatic” growth of its population since the past two decades. This growth is continuing but will slow in the 30 next years. Linked with the development of cities and of cities network since independence’s period, linked with economic change, population growth involved a higher rate of urban population growth. This growth is sensitive at different levels, in the number of cities (large, medium and small) and in urban extension. Those changes pose different problems, namely linked with environment as potable water supply, solid and liquid waste treatment, soil erosion and deforestation. In order to reduce those different problems, the World Bank makes prospects for 2025 and put in the highlight the necessity of political changes based on decentralised and local policies taking into account environment dimension in urban planning. According to this report, the management of environment could make easier the organisation of urban extension and of urban network being linked with rural organisation, agriculture production, etc… So integrating environmental dimension to urban planning and management could help Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve the level of development fixed by the World Bank for 2025.

The author problematizes his work in the following way :

- What are the difficulties of Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve development environmentally sustainable ?
- What are the perceptions of populations about this problem ?
- How could the World Bank help African borrowers to integrate environmental care in their development plans?
- What must the World Bank do to help these countries to achieve sustainable development?

In the foreword, François Falloux ( Environmental advisor in the AFTES) quotes a reflection that led Rio Earth Summit in 1992:

« Without improved environmental management, development will be undetermined, and without accelerated development in poor countries- which describes most of Sub-Saharan Africa- the environment will continue to degrade. »

This quotation makes obvious a kind of state of emergency for the Sub-Sahara Africa but it is more focalised on environmental problems than on human necessities.

Nevertheless, others quotations as the following do, seems to be contrary to this vision of development.

“ The State, heir to the colonial rule, could enforce its authority without control, but the emergence of local democracy has not yet been accompanied by the ability to make African urban society respect a public utility.
That is why, contrary to what numerous texts produced by the protectors of the environment say, it seems useless to plead for more legal and administrative means to control urban use. Moreover, since illegal occupancy of fragile or risk zones, as well as of land reserved for public purposes, is often the condition of poor urban people, such recommendations conflict with current World Bank policy, which limit any population displacement under its projects to the most extreme cases.”

The comparison of these two quotations is emblematic for the whole paper because the reader never really knows where is the author point of view.

For instance, the author presents statistic tables and explains it honestly, but sometimes in a wrong way , doing evolution comparison with absolute numbers instead of relative ones. In that way, the reader could be disappointed by the limited use of statistics. One also regrets the restrictive senses in which is seen the city, even if it certainly is in a care a clarity (the only definition of the city depends on the size).
In another regard, the paper is well organised and clearly; the plan is logical, but in a whole aspect, there are some repetitions and the author always remains in a global way, not enough precise.
The main care of projects linked with this paper and of the series it belongs to, was at the beginning to help Sub-Saharan Africa to develop and in this paper particularly to help African Cities to develop inside of it and into a network. Yet, before helping African societies to develop their cities the World Bank would like to make cities beyond reproach at environmental level, but it is not now really possible and almost not at all sustainable when the cities don’t have reach a kind of economic development and organisation inside cities and between cities that permit to implement environmental protection. Thus sustainable development is right to think about environment but it cannot forget development.


Nevertheless, this paper in all its contradictions shows the difficulty of writing and thinking about development, and almost that there is not only a way of thinking, but also ( and mainly) a way of action. This reading comforts my idea according to which humanistic science is always moving and that prospects are really uneasy to do, sometimes dangerous because some scientific conclusions lead to concrete action. This report is a perfect example, making a connotation of fact, deducting conclusions and making plan for action.
Another thing is the difficulty to establish a boarder between theory and action in humanistic science, and to preserve one’s researches to political view or judgement, especially concerning development. Such a science cannot be objective and obligatory works with choosing opinions. However, at the time when scientists agreed with and said it, there is no problem.
The difficulty to elaborate global plan, concepts or only explanations on Africa development is rather difficult even impossible, because it leads to mistake, namely in urban planning. So one should accept the plurality of thinking, even of contradictions and especially one should accept a perpetual questioning of theories and concepts.

Thank you so much!!!