Suspended Identity. Internal Migrations in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Rural/Urban Divide. A Project for the Senegal Sahel’s City-Villages along the Tambacounda-Kidira Axis.

There is a gap between the image and the reality of sub-Saharan Afri- can migration to Europe. Despite the tragic events that constantly affect the Med- iterranean, only 20% of the migrants cross the sub-Saharan borders while the remaining 80% move between the neighbouring countries or within their home country. Rather than speaking of migrations to the West, it is therefore more ac- curate to speak of migrations along the rural-urban route, with masses of people moving mainly towards the slums of African metropolises. However, the African urban reality is not just made up of metropolises. Between these and the remote rural villages there are small and, sometimes, very small, intermediate pseudo- urban realities. In these realities, potential bridges between the rural and urban worlds, most of the future of the continent is at stake. Today, in the absence of policies that consider the rural environment as a re- source, they appear as places whose identity has remained suspended between the ancient dimension of the village and the contemporary dimension of a con- fused and inappropriate modernity. The essay presents a research work conducted as part of a degree workshop, di- rected by the author, carried out in 2023 at the dAeD department of the Mediter- ranean University of Reggio Calabria. The research aimed to restore centrality and identity to small city/villages in a central-eastern region of Senegal, by equipping them with the essential architectural and urban planning services ca- pable of providing new job opportunities for their inhabitants. The aim of the research was to find solutions to reduce the flow of migration to the Dakar metropolitan area and to counter the phenomenon of abandonment of arable land.