Issuu

Malkit Shoshan

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration

Spring 2026

Project Based Seminar Report

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration

Course Instructor Malkit Shoshan Teaching Assistant Spurty Kamath Cayden Abu-Arja Students Adin Becker, Joseph Fujinami, Laiqa Gitosuputro, Ralph Lin, Cecilia Portillo Acknowledgments We are also grateful to the external contributors who participated in lectures, workshops, and reviews, and generously shared data with us: UNPBF: Diane Myriam A Sheinberg UN Habitat: Mathias Spaliviero; UNHCR: Rakesh Gupta Nuchanametla Ramasubbaiah, Abdulaye Sy, Vasiliki Tsioutsiou; and UNICEF: Nathalie Daries and Karin Heissler StoryMap This course review is supported by a Story Map with three sections: 1) Water, Landscape, and Agriculture in Arid Climates; 2) Infrastructure Recommendations for Mauritania; 3) Architectural Case Studies in Arid Climates, featuring student-collected case studies, design references, and additional recommendations. (link)

Previous Report For background and related research, see the previous complementary report (Spring 2025): Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration: https://issuu.com/gsdharvard/ docs/spatial_design_strategies_for_climate_ migration

Spatial Design Strategies for Climateand Conflict-Induced Migration Course Summary / Introduction This project-based seminar will examine migration induced by climate and conflict, which often intersect, in one of the most volatile hotspots in the world, the Sahel. The Sahel region has been grappling with the root causes and the multidimensional consequences of climate change for a long time; colonization, extensive resource extraction, conflict, and militarization. In the region, new trends in migration are observed, and local, national, and international policies and protocols for humanitarian contingency planning are currently being developed in response. In the Sahel, traditional lifestyles such as nomadic pastoralism and transhumance have thrived for millennia in extreme weather conditions, offering valuable lessons in adaptability and perseverance in times of crisis and resource scarcity. •

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What can we learn about the future of climate migration from these migration trends and rich local cultures, and how can they intersect with international interventions? How can we use multi-temporal and multi-scalar spatial analysis and climate vulnerability projections to understand a future planet in a constant state of flux– one in which the constraints of national territories are perhaps transcended– while embracing a deeper cultural preservation of lifestyles, construction techniques, materiality, habitat typologies?

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How can we forge relationships with broader ecological and environmental conditions defined by commons and collective resource management? What can these insights teach us about architecture and urban planning, and how can we use them to challenge our own discipline, pedagogy, and relationship with spatial production?

In the seminar, the class engages with diverse stakeholders and viewpoints from theory and practice, including conversations with representatives of United Nations agencies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which possess realtime data and field experience. Drawing on their data sets and engaging in dialogue with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community representatives, we develop a case study focused on climate migration in the Sahel, with particular attention to the situation in Mauritania, where local and international organizations work together to support the country’s open-door policy and its efforts to host refugees from the region (and prevent them from reaching Europe). Sessions include meetings with diverse stakeholders, interactions with UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, and representatives of local communities, as well as in-class workshops for project development that incorporate spatial analyses of migration trends and scenario exercises.

Introduction Malkit Shoshan

1. The Oasis Model Adin Becker

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure Ralph Lin

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp Joseph Fujinami

105

IV. Food Security as Spatial Design in Mbera Camp Cecilia Portillo 159

V. Tent as Home Laiqa Gitosuputro

195

Colophon

Malkit Shoshan

Climate change is redrawing the map of human habitability. Extreme climate zones and uninhabitable areas are projected to expand dramatically over the coming decades, as water stress, food insecurity, extreme heat, sea level rise, and weather-related disasters drive instability and displacement at an unprecedented scale. As of 2024, an estimated 123 million people are displaced worldwide (UNHCR), a number projected to rise sharply, disproportionately affecting those least responsible for the crisis. In a world where climate change and violent conflict are displacing millions, what can we learn from one of the most volatile hotspots on Earth? This project-based seminar examines migration driven by the intersection of climate and conflict in the Sahel, one of the world’s most environmentally and politically volatile regions. The Sahel has long grappled with the layered consequences of climate variability, colonization, resource extraction, conflict, and militarization. In response to shifting migration patterns, local, national, and international actors are now developing new policies and protocols for humanitarian contingency planning. Yet across this same landscape, traditional lifestyles such as nomadic pastoralism and transhumance have endured for millennia under extreme conditions, sustained by systems of mutual aid, seasonal mobility, and communitybased resource governance. Preserving this knowledge is not a matter of nostalgia: it is a survival strategy. As humanitarian response in the region has repeatedly shown, the urgency of providing shelter and saving lives can come at the cost of the very skills and knowledge systems that make displaced communities resilient in the first place. Tent-making, soil-based construction, weaving, and the social structures that govern shared resources are transmitted person to person, and every cycle of displacement risks

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration

Course Report Introduction

This report is the second installment of a two-part course. The first part, published as the course report in 2025, worked at the scale of the region: producing an atlas of the Mali-Mauritania borderlands alongside a set of large-scale recommendations for how migration corridors, settlement patterns, and infrastructure networks across the border might be reorganized in response to climate and conflict. This second part narrows the aperture. It moves from the region to the camp, from Mbera’s boundaries inward, and from the camp back out to its relationship with the surrounding host communities and landscape. Where the atlas asked where displacement happens and how it might be planned for at scale, this report asks how displacement is inhabited, day to day, at the scale of the system, the typology, and the material. See the first part of this course: Spatial Design Strategies for Climate- and Conflict-Induced Migration, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2025. Link: gsd.harvard.edu/publication/spatial-design-strategies-for-climate-migration

The course is sited at the border between Mali and Mauritania, on the Mauritanian side, in the Hodh Chargui region, roughly 80,000 square kilometers of desert plains, semi-arid savanna, and scattered water sources forming a transitional zone between the Sahara and the more vegetated Sahel to the south. Mauritania offers a rare policy environment in which to study displacement: in 2005, the government introduced an open-door policy by decree, granting refugees freedom of movement, work, and residence, making it, by most accounts, the only country in the world that allows refugees to live freely within its territory with access to state services, rather than confining them to closed camps. As one

severing that transmission before it can reach the next generation.

community elder in Hodh Chargui put it, “We have always shared our water, our shade, and even our food.” That ethic of hospitality, extended to Malian refugees fleeing conflict, makes the border region a genuine pilot for what welcoming refugees at scale could look like elsewhere. The course focuses specifically on Mbera camp, established in 2012 roughly forty kilometers from the Malian border. Its founding was the direct result of a Tuareg-led rebellion in northern Mali, led by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), which sought self-determination and the ability to govern under Tuareg authority a homeland whose autonomy had been promised, and deferred, through several earlier uprisings dating back decades. The 2012 rebellion was set in motion in part by the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya the previous year, which sent battle-hardened Tuareg fighters, along with weapons taken from Gaddafi’s arsenals, back across the border and fueled rapid rebel advances that captured Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu within months. The rebellion quickly became entangled with Islamist armed groups, among them Ansar Dine and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, part of a wider expansion of jihadist networks into the Sahara and Sahel that would eventually include the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, formed in 2015 as a splinter of an existing al-Qaeda-linked faction and now active in the tri-border area of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. A French-led military intervention in 2013 and a 2015 peace accord signed in Algiers brought an uneasy ceasefire, leaving Kidal under de facto rebel control for nearly a decade. That ceasefire unraveled after coups in 2020 and 2021 brought a military junta to power in Bamako. As relations with France and the United Nations deteriorated, the junta turned to Russia’s Wagner Group for security support beginning in late 2021, and in 2023 it requested the withdrawal of the UN’s

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration

Introduction

With peacekeepers gone by December 2023, Malian army units and Wagner forces launched an offensive that recaptured Kidal that November, ending nearly a decade in which the town had sat outside central government control. That alliance has been paid for in part through access to Mali’s natural resources: Wagner has signed gold-mining agreements with the Malian government, taken a majority stake in a national gold-mining firm, and, in February 2024, when the government fell behind on the roughly ten-milliondollar monthly fee it owed the group, seized control of one of the country’s largest gold mines outright. Fighting between the Malian army and Tuareg-led forces has continued intermittently since. More than a decade of this violence, escalating in waves since 2012, has forced tens of thousands of people, disproportionately women and children, across the border into Mauritania, and it is many of them who now make up the population of Mbera camp. Originally designed as a temporary settlement for 70,000 people, the camp now spans some 415 hectares and, according to a recent UNHCR survey, houses more than 118,000 residents, with an estimated 154,000 additional refugees living outside its boundaries in the surrounding region. Of the more than 272,000 registered refugees in the area, roughly 55 percent are under eighteen. Refugees, host communities, and transhumant pastoralists now share the same constrained land, water, and pasture, and the camp’s own spatial organization, an institutional grid of water lines, latrines, and shared programs overlaid by the irregular, shifting enclosures of nomadic shelter, makes visible the friction between humanitarian planning logic and the lived,

peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, which the Security Council formally wound down that year.

Introduction

For further background on the site, see the essay written for this course: FAST, “Nomadic Cultures Amidst Forced Displacement,” e-flux Architecture. Link: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/humanitarianism/6783009/nomadiccultures-amidst-forced-displacement

Given this context, the course revolves around four questions. What can we learn about the future of climate migration from emerging displacement trends and rich local culture, and how do they intersect with international interventions? How can we use multi-temporal, multi-scalar spatial analysis and climate vulnerability projections to understand a planet in constant flux, one in which national borders are perhaps transcended, while deepening the preservation of local lifestyles, construction techniques, materiality, and habitat typologies? How can we forge relationships with broader ecological conditions defined by commons, collective and regenerative resource management? And what can these insights teach us about architecture and urban planning, and how can they challenge our own discipline, pedagogy, and relationship to spatial production? Students engage directly with the stakeholders shaping this landscape. Representatives from UNHCR and UN-Habitat share real-time data and field experience, while FAST (Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory) contributed the results of field research and focus groups conducted directly in Mbera camp in 2025, grounding the coursework in the perspectives of residents themselves rather than in policy documents alone. Dialogue with local NGOs, community representatives, designers, scientists, and other experts further anchors the work in lived reality.

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration

mobile spatial practices this course takes as its subject.

This narrower scale carries with it a shift in ambition. Rather than a further set of regional recommendations, the five projects that follow are conceived as proposals tangible enough to be picked up: interventions that UNHCR, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, and the communities living in and around Mbera camp could plausibly test, adapt, or build. Drawing on ongoing conversations with these agencies, and on FAST’s 2025 field research and focus groups with the local population, students developed spatial strategies aimed less at reimagining the region than at improving daily life, livelihood, and dignity within the camp’s existing boundaries, translating the course’s four guiding questions into design proposals meant to be handed back to the people who will live with them. Read together, the five projects answer those four questions in built form. Adin Becker’s regional oasis network and Cecilia Portillo’s communal food production space take up the question of commons and collective resource management directly, proposing infrastructure that channels shared resources rather than fencing them off. Ralph Lin’s fog-catching sanitation node and Joseph Fujinami’s school for Mbera camp ask what it means to design climate-responsive, culturally grounded typologies inside a camp built largely on imported, standardized models, testing the course’s questions about materiality and habitat typology against the realities of an actual site. Laiqa Gitosuputro’s modular tent system returns most directly to

In-class workshops support spatial analysis of migration trends alongside scenario and design exercises, situating student research within a live case study of climate- and conflict-induced migration in the Sahel.

Introduction

Running through all five is the course’s broader challenge to the discipline itself: each project treats architecture and planning not as instruments of control over a displaced population but as tools that displaced and host communities alike might use to shape their own futures. This closer lens also brings forward a gender dimension largely absent from macro-scale analysis. From Fujinami’s protected classroom spaces to Gitosuputro’s tents, built and maintained by women, several projects examine how design can empower women both as bearers of traditional knowledge and as agents shaping their communities’ future. 1. Resource Governance by Adin Becker Adin Becker’s project takes up the question of who controls scarce resources, and how. Refugees, host communities, and transhumant pastoralists already compete for the same water, land, and pasture around Mbera camp, often through governance arrangements that remain invisible in official planning. Becker maps these hidden governance layers alongside water systems, flash flood hydrology, and transhumance patterns, then proposes a regional oasis network of six specialized nodes and three corridor waypoints. The network folds water harvesting, food production, commerce, and community governance into a single, self-sustaining infrastructure, one that operates through commons and collective resource management rather than around them.

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration

the question of cultural preservation, asking how a structure designed for emergency survival might instead sustain the skills and identity of the people who build it.

3. School as Empowerment Infrastructure by Joseph Fujinami Education and protection converge in Joseph Fujinami’s design for Mbera camp’s school, developed as two typologies, one for use inside the camp and one for use outside it, together with shared design and activation principles. Layered mud-brick and vegetated walls provide thermal comfort for classroom spaces, while the arrangement of learning environments integrates the familiar surroundings of refugees and host communities alike, creating opportunities for engagement through classroom gardens and the preservation of local trades. The school’s layering of materiality and private-to-public programming also creates protected spaces for girls and other vulnerable groups, treating the building itself as infrastructure for both learning and safety. 4. Food Security and Food Access by Cecilia Portillo Cecilia Portillo’s work on food security in Mbera camp takes up a related tension between dependency and autonomy, mapping existing conditions and proposals across the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability. The proposal centers on a communal food production space grounded in practices of cooking, preservation, and knowledge-sharing already present in the camp. Rather than

2. Water, Sanitation, and Social Infrastructure by Ralph Lin Ralph Lin’s project takes up water, a resource treated everywhere in the Sahel as existential, and asks what happens when infrastructure built to manage it is also designed to bring people together. By integrating fog-catching systems with earthen toilet structures, the proposal reframes sanitation not merely as a technical necessity but as a social catalyst, creating a shared spatial node where water collection and community interaction happen in the same place and turning essential infrastructure into collective public space.

importing a solution, the project strengthens what residents already do, echoing Becker’s argument that infrastructure works best when it channels resources through community management, and supporting a shift from aid dependency toward more autonomous, self-sustained ways of living. 5. Tent as Community by Laiqa Gitosuputro Shelter, finally, is where the course’s questions about cultural preservation become most concrete. The institutional tent is designed for emergency survival with a short intended lifespan, yet displaced populations often inhabit it for years or decades, a mismatch Laiqa Gitosuputro’s project confronts directly. Traditional African nomadic tents, by contrast, are built and maintained by women using local techniques that embed cultural identity and adaptability into the fabric of home. The project explores how a shaded, modular frame system can bridge that gap, turning the institutional tent into a site of both community-led adaptation and cultural expression. Taken together, these five projects trace the course’s central argument: that the systems developed to manage displacement, including water systems, food infrastructure, schools, shelters, and governance structures, are never neutral. Each is an opportunity either to entrench dependency or to build the capacity, dignity, and cultural continuity of the communities it serves, one material, one craft, one relationship to soil and season at a time. It is this argument, tested case by case, across one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Mbera Camp, Mauritania. 2025, FAST

I. THE OASIS MODEL Adin Becker

M’bera must be planned at a regional, not camp, scale because it functions as an integrated socio-ecological territory shared by refugees, host communities, and pastoralists. Not as an isolated humanitarian site. Its complex governance, shared resources, and overlapping land uses demand a networked infrastructure model that aligns with the real pressures and actors across the landscape, rather than expanding a bounded camp that contradicts the region’s fluid and interconnected reality.

Node C : Integration hub impression

Reading the Territory

Adin Becker

M’bera has become more than a camp. Over 110,000 refugees live in and around a site built for 70,000 on what was once an arid pastoral commons. Another 150,000 people live in some 90 surrounding villages, and roughly 800,000 livestock graze the same landscape under transhumance patterns older than the Mali border. The site straddles three commune jurisdictions, with no single authority managing it. Between Néma and the Mali border, at least seven institutional layers govern the territory, yet no single body coordinates water, mobility, or land use across all users. Hosts and refugees share wells and markets, while pastoralists move through in seasonal rhythms that contradict the logic of a fixed camp. The question is not whether the camp can be expanded, but whether its spatial logic can match what is actually being governed. Given the range of actors and pressures on the landscape, the right scale is regional rather than campbounded. As interactions between refugees and hosts grow, integration with existing systems is paramount. A larger camp will not meet the complex needs of all communities sharing the region, but a network of multifunctional nodes can. The Oasis Model proposes six specialized hubs and three corridor waypoints, managed by existing committees from day one and engineered to persist regardless of how the camp evolves.

I. The Oasis Model

M’bera must be planned at a regional, not camp, scale

M’bera’s surrounding territory is governed across seven institutional layers. Formal international humanitarian authority sits at one end, with traditional customary practice at the other. These layers overlap, substitute, or miss each other entirely. Water governance fragments across five scales with no integrating authority. Religious and gender structures exist but often remain invisible to formal planning. Pastoral customary frameworks are frequently overridden by the camp’s spatial layout. The Oasis Model is, in part, a proposition for acting at this scale of institutional fragmentation. Its objective is to build each piece of infrastructure to fit a layer already operating on the ground.

Governance Architecture Seven Layers

Bameire

Regional Oasis Network →

C: Integration Hub

t ala

Refugee-host commerce

Bassikounou

stu pa

Dail

Health satellite

ove

Ouatelbous

men

t↔

Cheggarg

Full Oasis Node (A, B, D, E) Corridor Waypoint (W1–W3) Integration Hub (C) Oasis Corridor Route Flash flood channels (seasonal) Road network

MOVEMENT FLOWS Transhumance / refugee flow from Mali Daily camp ↔ Bassikounou movement Seasonal pastoral movement (N ↔ S)

↕ SEASONAL PASTORAL

Corridor Strategy: M’bera, Bassikounou and Beyond

Flash flood harvesting

A: Northern Water Hub

W2 W1

Small market

Rest / water

M'bera Camp

E: Energy/Education Solar school + vocational

D: Pastoral Gateway Livestock + transit (Mali)

B B: Southern Anchor Aquaponics + permaculture

Vantor TRANSHUMANCE FROM MALI

Governance Architecture Seven Layers

FOR M A L

INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN

NATIONAL GOVERNMENT ANRPTS (civil registry, biometrics), Ministry of Hydraulics, SNDE (national water utility), Direction Régionale, military escorts. Open-door policy, prima facie recognition.

I. The Oasis Model

UNHCR (camp management, refugee status), WFP (food), ALIMA (health, formerly MSF), ACF (WASH operations, nutrition; originally Oxfam-drilled boreholes), UNICEF (WASH funding), ICRC

DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS World Bank (water tower, SNDE grid, PRAPS), GIZ/BMZ (Pronexus - 60+ income activities), EU (RIMRAP - agro-pastoral resilience), UN PBF (social cohesion).

MUNICIPAL / COMMUNE Bassikounou, Vessale, El Megve. IOM village committees (est. 2015), commune water committees, local government offices.

RELIGIOUS / SPIRITUAL Marabouts, imams, mosques (dispute resolution, marriage, social cohesion, education). Mourchidates network (UNODC 2021). Absent from formal architecture but operationally active.

WOMEN’S / GENDER IOM village committees (49 gender focal points), 20 women’s associations. Bassikounou Women’s Network - ONDFF (national observatory). 53% of camp committee membership. Agriculture pour femmes.

TRADITIONAL / CUSTOMARY Pastoral grazing rights, customary territory, transhumance protocols, Fulani pastoral symbiosis (Stenning 1959), fire brigades, refugee-host garden exchange, harīm/agdal water governance. INF O R M A L

International & national authority

Local formal authority

Customary & community authority

Religious infrastructure: Two governance layers with critical roles across the M’bera territory are functionally invisible in formal planning data. Satellite imagery identifies 13+ mosques in the region—2 in the camp, 5 in Bassikounou, 6 in surrounding rural areas—almost certainly an undercount, while official camp shapefiles show none. Yet religious leaders act as first recourse for dispute resolution, officiate marriages (including child and forced marriage), organize Friday prayers as the largest regular communal gathering, and run Quranic madrasas that reach children excluded from formal schooling. Established in 2021 by UNODC and the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, the Mourchidates network places religiously trained women in border zones to counter violent extremism. Gender governance Women’s governance is the most developed community-level structure in the territory, even where it is spatially undocumented. 83% of new arrivals are women and children; there are 49 IOM gender focal points and 20 women’s associations across the three communes. The Bassikounou Women’s Network now serves as the technical branch of the National Observatory on Rights of Women and Girls (ONDFF). Female-headed households are the default in the camp, as male herders are often away on monthslong transhumance routes. Yet the locations of the 49 focal points are missing from public planning data; mapping them is a precondition for any design that takes care seriously.

The Oasis Model treats religious and gender infrastructure as core programmatic elements of every major node.

Invisible Governance: Religious and Gender Governance

Hydrological Opportunity

M’bera lies between two flash-flood corridors, with major drainage channels to the north and south, yet this water is currently lost, leaving the camp exposed to floods during the July–September monsoon and chronic scarcity for the remaining nine months. Basic rainwater-harvesting infrastructure, a 50 m bouli pond at a convergence point plus half-moon catchments that cut runoff by 77%, could capture up to 4,000 m³ per monsoon, enough to supplement one oasis node for multiple months into the dry season. Proven Sahel techniques can retain more than 80% of floodwater.

flash-flood corridor, north

M’bera Camp

flash-flood corridor, south

Drainage/Floodplain

M’bera camp blocks

Map by the author, 2026. Drainage analysis: NASADEM 30m DEM.

I. The Oasis Model

M’bera currently wastes nearby flash-flood water, but basic rainwater-harvesting (bouli ponds and half-moon catchments) could capture enough to supply oasis nodes into the dry season.

From Analysis to Design

Spatialization Logic Node placement does not follow equal-distance rules. Instead, eight territorial pressures determine where nodes belong, and a major node emerges where several converge: hydrological (flash-flood convergence, runoff capture); population pressure (dense camp blocs, extension zones); mobility intensity (camp– town movement, road corridors); seasonal transhumance (linked to the monsoon); governance capacity (IOM committees, women’s networks); and future integration potential (SNDE compatibility, host-community management). Transhumance operates beyond camp scale: herds move south from November–June and north from July–October, and PRAPS (the World Bank’s regional pastoral resilience program) has demarcated 4,200 km of corridors across the Sahel. Node placement treats this cycle as a fixed design constraint. A waypoint is sited where only one or two of these pressures are present.

FINDING

PROPOSAL

Flash floods are an important resource opportunity

Bouli ponds at convergence points capture monsoon water

Religious and gender governance are lacking in the formal planning system

Oasis nodes include prayer space and women’s center as core functions

150,000+ out-of-camp refugees in 90+ villages are underserved

Corridor waypoints along the Bassikounou road

275 additional water points needed; camp wells too shallow (57m vs. 156m in Bassikounou)

Deep boreholes (150m) and a distributed oasis network

No bilateral framework for the shared JQ aquifer with Mali

Pastoral Gateway node near the border as a future cooperation point

Camp designed for 70K, now 110K+ with little infrastructure in the expansion zones

Southern Anchor node with aquaponics and permaculture in Extension SW/SE

The previous pages, together with Sections I–III of this atlas, point to six findings, each corresponding to a design move.

From Linear Corridor to Territorial Grid

I. The Oasis Model

The conventional camp is imagined as linear: a road from town to camp, a perimeter, and a single axis of sequential, single-function infrastructure (a market here, a water point there, a clinic). The Oasis Model proposes a different geometry, inspired by Archizoom Associati’s 1969 No-Stop City, which treats infrastructure as a continuous field rather than a hierarchy. In this model, water and food-grazing are configured as two crossing systems, and nodes emerge at their intersections. This approach re-applies an older territorial logic. The caravanserai typology of Walatah, in which water, shelter, and exchange are provided at fixed intervals along trade routes, is the closest regional precedent for what the diagram below describes: a field of intersections instead of a corridor. LINEAR CORRIDOR

TERRITORIAL GRID

single route, fixed sequence

two networks cross; nodes emerge at intersections ↑ N - dry-season pasture, Walata

WATER NETWORK: boreholes, boulis, pipe

Bassikounou

W1 graze

water + rest

pasture water , food , market

M’bera

→ Mali

FOOD / GRAZING: pasture, agriculture, livestock

Camp services should form a network of intersecting nodes, not a single linear corridor.

W2 exchange , water , trade

farm

water + market

school , power , food

graze

prayer

trees

border

graze

food , water , community

W3 water + shade

food / grazing corridor

major node

waypoint

Where water and food networks cross, a node emerges. Function follows intersection intensity. Major nodes (A-E) sit where both systems are strong; waypoints (W1-W3) where only one is. water network

i→

↓ S - Mali border

One axis of movement. Fixed program per node.

minor function

flo

rit

water , food , livestock

Regional Oasis Network

A network of differentiated nodes and waypoints is sited where water, mobility, and population pressures intersect, creating a regional system that is relatively low-cost compared to existing Sahel investments. The network distributes five major node types and three corridor waypoints across the territory between Bassikounou and the Mali border. Each sits at the intersection of water, mobility, and population pressure, and is sized, programmed, and financed for a distinct role within the system. Total network cost is about $412,500, with annual maintenance of $25,000, amounting to less than 0.2 percent of the $248 million PRAPS investment underway across the Sahel. The map below presents the proposition at regional scale. Regional Oasis Network

Corridor Strategy: M’bera, Bassikounou and

↕ SEASONAL PASTORAL

Bameire

→

C: Integration Hub

ala

Refugee-host commerce

Bassikounou

stu

Dail

Flash flood harvesting

Health satellite

ove

Ouatelbous

men

A: Northern Water Hub

W2 W1

Small market

t↔

Rest / water

M'bera Camp Cheggarg

E: Energy/Education Solar school + vocational

D: Pastoral Gateway Livestock + transit (Mali)

Mali

Full Oasis Node (A, B, D, E) Corridor Waypoint (W1–W3) Integration Hub (C) Oasis Corridor Route Flash flood channels (seasonal) Road network

MOVEMENT FLOWS Transhumance / refugee flow from Mali

Daily camp ↔ Bassikounou movement Seasonal pastoral movement (N ↔ S)

B: Southern Anchor Aquaponics + permaculture

Vantor TRANSHUMANCE FROM MALI

Node Types Specialization within a Shared Kit

Each node is specialized but shares a core program: a water point, shade, gathering space, prayer area, women’s center, and market stalls. Their emphasis differs: Node A on water and density; Node B on food production; Node C on commerce and host–refugee integration; Node D on pastoral transit; Node E on energy and education; and the corridor waypoints on rest and small-scale water along the Bassikounou route.

I. The Oasis Model

Each node has a shared basic program but a distinct emphasis, forming a network that can start quickly at Node A and scale to full operation within a few years.

Together, their detailed site plans outline a network that can start immediately at Node A with community labor, scale through additional financing, and reach full operation within a few years.

NODE

NAME

PRIMARY SPECIALTY

SERVES

Northern Water-led Node

Water harvesting + distribution

110K in-camp (dense blocs)

$88,500

Southern Anchor

Aquaponics + permaculture

Expansion zone, future residents

$62,000

Exchange-led Node

Refugee-host commerce

All three constituent groups

$81,000

Pastoral-led Node

Livestock + transit market

Herders, new arrivals from Mali

$41,000

Energy / Education

Solar school + vocational

Youth, students, camp + host

$68,000

W1–3

Corridor Waypoints

Rest / water / shade stops

150K+ out-of-camp (90+ villages)

$24K × 3

TOTAL NETWORK ~$412,500

Annual maintenance ~$25,000/yr

EST. COST

Bassikounou is far better served by deep, documented water infrastructure than much larger M’bera; the Oasis Model closes this depth and distribution gap with a new deep borehole and a distributed water network.

Two Systems One Aquifer

The hydrological asymmetry between Bassikounou and M’bera mirrors their governance asymmetry. Bassikounou, a town of about 20,000 people, has over fifteen documented water points, including a 156 m borehole into the deep JQ aquifer; many wells are classified in the USGS survey as serving the population. M’bera, 15 km away with ten times the population, relies on five points recorded as “vide” (blank) or “cheptel” (livestock only), and its deepest well is just 57 m. UNHCR’s MBERRE2 borehole appears in the national database without hydrological data, highlighting weak integration between humanitarian and national monitoring systems. Camp planning data shows a need for 275 additional water points across 31 of 54 blocs, and ten blocs have none at all, so the shortfall is both in depth and distribution. The Oasis Model proposes a 150 m deep borehole at Node A (about $18,000) and a distributed network that brings water to blocs that currently lack it. BASSIKOUNOU

M'BERA CAMP

Pop. around 20k - 15+ water points documents in vicinity

Northern Water Hub - target 150m depth

Large refugee poulation - 4 boreholes documented in vicinity

PROPOSED NODE A

62m

60m

80m

100m

120m

156m - ROTARY DRILL (1991)

Depth (meters below surface)

40m

140m

BARELY REACHING - shallow aquifer USAGE: "vide" (blank) / invisible No depth, yield, or conductivity data readily available

El Maleh (1965)

"négatif" USAGE: "cheptel" only

Sand, gravel

Water Table averages between 41-56m depth

SHALLOW AQUIFER TARGET: 150m - DEEP AQUIFER

15 km 20m

57m max - SHALLOW ONLY

Escarpment zone Betwen 50-80m depth Lower yield and variable quality

Confining Layer

Deeper JQ Aquifer Jurassic-CretaceousQuaternary sedimentary Between 100-200m depth Higher yield, better quality

160m

but requires rotary drill rig

Working deep aquifer USAGE: "population" Full hydrogeological data recorded

PROPOSED: Deep borehole at Node A Rotary drill to 150m+ into JQ aquifer Higher yield, better quality, reliable supply Est. cost: $18,000 (incl. in Node A budget)

Working borehole that reaches productive aquifer (Bassikounou) Camp borehole. Quite shallow, barely reaching aquifer (M'bera) Failed/negative well Proposed deep borehole at Node A (150m into JQ aquifer)

Sources: USGS/PRISM-II OFR 2013-1280-C (Friedel, Finn & Horton 2015); Caselle et al. 2020 (MDPI Sustainability); UNHCR Factsheet Sept 2024

BEDROCK

OASIS NODE: SITE PLAN A Sited at flash flood convergence and highest-density camp blocs Flash flood channel (seasonal Jul–Sept)

DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS

AGRICULTURAL PERIMETER (half-moons + zaï pits)

WATER SYSTEM

N NA

Bouli pond retains water 2–3 months post-monsoon. Half-moons: 77% peak flow reduction. Solar pump, elevated tank -> gravity distribution. SNDE compatible.

LEGEND

Deep borehole backup (target 150m+ into JQ aquifer).

TIV

Borehole / water point

FOOD PRODUCTION

Bouli pond

Aquaponics: tilapia + leafy greens, 90% less water. Harvest every 2 weeks. Fish protein addresses anaemia.

Solar panels / micro-grid Elevated water tank

Permaculture ring: moringa (nutrition), balanites (oil/fodder), acacia senegal (gum arabic), jujube (fruit).

Water distribution pipe Community / prayer building

SHADE CANOPY TO REDUCE EVAPORATION

BOULI POND ~50m - seasonal water storage

SOLAR PUMP

Women's center

Managed trough downhill from human supply. Manure,

School / classroom

compost in agricultural perimeter (Fulani symbiosis). Market stalls: dairy, meat, vegetables. Revenue and maintenance.

Market stalls

Half-moon / agriculture

Joint oasis committee: 3 camp + 2 host + 2 pastoral. Tiered water pricing: free 15 L/p/d humanitarian min,

fish

Composting area

subsidized additional, market rate for commercial/livestock.

fertilizer

Livestock watering Aquaponics / grow beds

GOVERNANCE

WATER TANK greens

LIVESTOCK + COMMERCE

Native tree (shade / food) Road connection

recirculation

Prayer

AQUAPONICS

+ Women's Ctr

COMMUNITY

manure & compost

PLAY CHILDREN 'S SPACE

COMPOST

MARKET SNDE grid

LIVESTOCK away from supply

Camp road network (12m)

Human figure (scale)

PHASING

Immediate implementation

Year 1

Bouli pond + solar pump + elevated tank

Year 1–2

Aquaponics pilot + first market stalls

Year 2–3

Full market + agriculture perimeter + trees

Year 3+

SNDE grid connection + governance handover

Shade canopy

INDIGENOUS MODELS

ESTIMATED BUDGET

Fulani symbiosis (manure and water exchange, Stenning 1959) Harīm (Islamic well buffer zones - customary law)

Bouli pond (excavation + lining)

Agdal (seasonal resource rotation - Berber/Tuareg) Traditional bouli water harvesting (Sahel, centuries-old)

Deep borehole (150m, rotary drill)

Solar pump + elevated tank (10,000L) Aquaponics system (local materials) Market (6 stalls) + community/prayer building Agriculture, trees, livestock, compost, training

~150m

TOTAL NODE A (incl. 15% contingency)

Sources: SAHARAPONICS (Elsevier 2025); Tamagnone et al. 2020; Barry et al. 2008; Bayala et al. 2014; Goddek et al. 2019; FAO Sahel RWH; Stenning 1959. Design: Author.

OASIS NODE C: INTEGRATION HUB Sited to promote camp-town interaction DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS

Nema / Walata

COMMERCE Covered market hall: 12+ stalls for dairy, meat, vegetables, crafts, tools. Open plaza for overflow and events. Revenue funds node maintenance. Primary exchange point for all three constituent groups.

WOMEN'S CENTER Agriculture training, ONDFF branch, GBV services. Expands existing Bassikounou Women's

CHARGING Phones + radio

Network. Links camp → national observatory.

PRAYER WATER POINT

GOVERNANCE

SNDE-connected

Dispute resolution between refugee, host, and pastoral users. Commune interface. Oasis

WOMEN'S CENTER

LEGEND

committee meets weekly. Escalation to marabouts.

Bassikounou

Agriculture training ONDFF branch office GBV services

MARKET HALL 12+ stalls: dairy, meat, vegetables, crafts, tools, fabric

SNDE water main →

M'bera (15 km)

OPEN PLAZA Events, overflow market, gathering

Bouli pond

SNDE-connected water point designed for national utility from day one. Satellite health

Solar panels / micro-grid

clinic with referral pathway to Bassikounou hospital.

GOVERNANCE Dispute resolution Commune interface

Borehole / water point

WATER + HEALTH

HEALTH

Satellite clinic Referral to Bassikounou

LIVESTOCK Watering + holding Separates herds from market

Elevated water tank Water distribution pipe

ESTIMATED BUDGET

Community / prayer building

Market hall (covered, 12+ stalls)

$20,000

Women's center + governance building

$15,000

SNDE water connection

$10,000

Solar micro-grid (for market + buildings)

$25,000

Health satellite, charging, prayer, livestock

$11,000

TOTAL NODE C

~$81,000

Sources: IOM Village Committees; ONDFF; SNDE transition plan (World Bank IDA-18); Author's design

School / classroom Market stalls Livestock watering Aquaponics / grow beds Half-moon / agriculture Composting area

PHASING

~100m

Women's center

Year 1

SNDE connection + open market stalls

Year 1-2

Women's center + governance building

Year 2-3

Health satellite + solar + covered market hall

Native tree (shade / food) Road connection Human figure (scale) Immediate implementation

The oasis model diagrams

OASIS NODE D: PASTORAL GATEWAY Sited on Mali approach route where transhumance flows converge DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT

N MANAGED GRAZING ZONE

3 managed troughs - handles seasonal surge when herders arrive Nov-June. Separates livestock from human water. Managed grazing perimeter. Manure collected → composting for nearby agriculture.

WATER Deep borehole (150m target) + solar pump.

← M'bera camp

Serves both human and livestock needs. Critical during dry season when surface water gone. SOLAR

LEGEND

SEASONAL MARKET DEEP BOREHOLE 150m target + solar pump

Livestock trade, dairy, fodder. Peaks during dry season when herders concentrate. Creates managed

Borehole / water point

exchange point rather than ad-hoc camp intrusion.

Bouli pond

TRANSIT SHELTER

Solar panels / micro-grid

LIVESTOCK WATERING

TRANSIT SHELTER

Clustered layout (tent principles) Not grid - pastoral clustering

Elevated water tank

Clustered layout using tent principles - not grid.

Water distribution pipe

Serves new arrivals and herders in transit.

Community / prayer building

Arrival services: registration, info, referral to camp.

SEASONAL MARKET

Women's center School / classroom Market stalls

3 troughs - manages seasonal surge Separates herds from human areas

Livestock trade, dairy, fodder Peaks Nov-June (dry season)

ESTIMATED BUDGET ARRIVAL SERVICES Registration, info, referral

Herder arrivals

$14,000 $18,000

$8,000 $5,500

$22,000

Aquaponics / grow beds

Livestock watering infrastructure

$5,000

Half-moon / agriculture

Seasonal market structures

$8,000

Composting area

Transit shelter + arrival services

$6,000

Native tree (shade / food)

TOTAL NODE D

Road connection

~$41,000

Human figure (scale) Immediate implementation

PHASING

$6,000

$25,000

Livestock watering

Deep borehole + solar pump

~125m

Month 1

Borehole + solar pump (immediate need)

Month 3

Livestock troughs + managed grazing zone

Month 6

Market structures + transit shelter cluster

→

$88,500

Sources: IOM DTM Transhumance Tracking; PRAPS/World Bank; Ministry of Interior circular (2026); Author's design

OASIS NODE E: ENERGY/EDUCATION HUB Sited at camp edge where solar exposure is unobstructed and road access serves both camp and host community DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS N

ENERGY SYSTEM 10 kW solar micro-grid: 15 × 415W panels. Battery storage for evening use (school, charging, radio). Powers all buildings on-site. Surplus exported to adjacent camp blocs. Vocational training includes solar maintenance.

EDUCATION School: 2 classrooms (concrete/corrugated iron, matching camp standard). Outdoor learning area under shade trees. Electric

SOLAR MICRO-GRID

lighting enables evening/adult classes. Complements 6 existing UNICEF-supported schools.

Power export to camp blocs

LEGEND

VOCATIONAL TRAINING Workshop: carpentry, sewing, electronics repair, solar panel maintenance. Links to BATTERY STORAGE

Camp road (to M'bera)

10 kW - 15 × 415W panels

Borehole / water point Bouli pond

GIZ/BMZ Pronexus (60+ income activities).

Solar panels / micro-grid

Graduates maintain oasis network infrastructure.

Elevated water tank

CONGREGATION + COMMS SCHOOL PLAY CHILDREN'S SPACE

Class 1

Class 2

VOCATIONAL

Carpentry, sewing, electronics repair, solar maintenance

Outdoor Learning

COMMS HUB Radio + WiFi

Community meetings, events, film screenings, worship

Kiosks (2)

Community / prayer building

worship, celebrations. Radio + WiFi hub.

Women's center

Phone/battery charging: income generation point.

School / classroom

Phones, batteries, lights

home skills

tools

2 classrooms + outdoor

CHARGING

Water distribution pipe

Covered gathering space: community meetings, film/info screenings (solar-powered projector),

WATER POINT Solar-powered borehole

GATHERING

Market stalls

ESTIMATED BUDGET

Livestock watering

Solar micro-grid (10kW + battery)

$30,000

Aquaponics / grow beds

School building (2 classrooms)

$20,000

Half-moon / agriculture

Vocational workshop

$10,000

Composting area

Charging stations (phones, batteries)

$3,000

Native tree (shade / food)

Internet/radio hub + antenna

$5,000

TOTAL NODE E

~$68,000

Road connection Human figure (scale) Immediate implementation

Covered open-air space

PHASING SHADE TREES (moringa, balanites)

~125m

Sources: GIZ/BMZ Pronexus; UNICEF education data; UNHCR Camp Planning Shapefiles; Author's design. Solar pricing: Innovation Africa; EnviroLeg SA.

Year 1

Solar micro-grid + battery storage + charging stations

Year 1–2

School building (2 classrooms) + outdoor learning area

Year 2–3

Vocational workshop + radio/WiFi hub + kiosks

Year 3+

Power export to camp blocs + maintenance by graduates

Node A Northern Water Hub

Sited where a northern flash-flood drainage meets the densest camp blocs, it integrates: a 150 m borehole into the JQ aquifer with solar-pumped, gravity-fed distribution; a bouli pond and halfmoon catchments for dry-season supply; aquaponics using about 90% less water than conventional agriculture; a permaculture food forest; a market for refugee–host–pastoral exchange; a managed livestock watering point downhill of the human supply; and a gathering complex with a prayer space, women’s center, and dispute-resolution venue. Total cost is $88,500, financed by humanitarian (UNHCR, UNICEF, ACF, already active at M’bera), development (World Bank IDA-18, EU/RIMRAP), corporate, and climate funds. Built to national technical standards from day one, it is advised by ACF and managed by a seven-member oasis committee (3 camp, 2 host, 2 pastoral; minimum 3 women) anchored in the existing IOM village committee.

I. The Oasis Model

Node A is the network’s primary water-and-food hub at the heart of the camp.

OASIS NODE: SITE PLAN A Sited at flash flood convergence and highest-density camp blocs Flash flood channel (seasonal Jul–Sept)

DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS

AGRICULTURAL PERIMETER (half-moons + zaï pits)

WATER SYSTEM

N NA

TIV

Bouli pond retains water 2–3 months post-monsoon. Half-moons: 77% peak flow reduction. Solar pump, elevated tank -> gravity distribution. SNDE compatible. Deep borehole backup (target 150m+ into JQ aquifer).

LEGEND Borehole / water point

FOOD PRODUCTION

Bouli pond

Aquaponics: tilapia + leafy greens, 90% less water.

Solar panels / micro-grid

Harvest every 2 weeks. Fish protein addresses anaemia. Permaculture ring: moringa (nutrition), balanites (oil/fodder), acacia senegal (gum arabic), jujube (fruit).

Elevated water tank Water distribution pipe Community / prayer building

LIVESTOCK + COMMERCE

SHADE CANOPY TO REDUCE EVAPORATION

BOULI POND ~50m - seasonal water storage

SOLAR PUMP

GOVERNANCE Joint oasis committee: 3 camp + 2 host + 2 pastoral. Tiered water pricing: free 15 L/p/d humanitarian min, subsidized additional, market rate for commercial/livestock.

WATER TANK greens

fish

recirculation

AQUAPONICS

fertilizer

+ Women's Ctr

manure & compost

PLAY CHILDREN 'S SPACE

COMPOST

MARKET SNDE grid

LIVESTOCK away from supply

~150m Sources: SAHARAPONICS (Elsevier 2025); Tamagnone et al. 2020; Barry et al. 2008; Bayala et al. 2014; Goddek et al. 2019; FAO Sahel RWH; Stenning 1959. Design: Author.

School / classroom Market stalls Livestock watering Aquaponics / grow beds Half-moon / agriculture Composting area Native tree (shade / food) Road connection

Prayer

COMMUNITY

Camp road network (12m)

Women's center

Managed trough downhill from human supply. Manure, compost in agricultural perimeter (Fulani symbiosis). Market stalls: dairy, meat, vegetables. Revenue and maintenance.

Human figure (scale)

PHASING

Immediate implementation

Year 1

Bouli pond + solar pump + elevated tank

Year 1–2

Aquaponics pilot + first market stalls

Year 2–3

Full market + agriculture perimeter + trees

Year 3+

SNDE grid connection + governance handover

Shade canopy

INDIGENOUS MODELS

ESTIMATED BUDGET

Fulani symbiosis (manure and water exchange, Stenning 1959) Harīm (Islamic well buffer zones - customary law) Agdal (seasonal resource rotation - Berber/Tuareg) Traditional bouli water harvesting (Sahel, centuries-old)

Bouli pond (excavation + lining)

$6,000

Solar pump + elevated tank (10,000L)

$14,000

Deep borehole (150m, rotary drill)

$18,000

Aquaponics system (local materials)

$8,000

Market (6 stalls) + community/prayer building

$25,000

Agriculture, trees, livestock, compost, training

$5,500

TOTAL NODE A (incl. 15% contingency)

~$88,500

Node B Southern Anchor

Sited to the south, it is built to scale if the current 110,000 refugees double. While Node A provides immediate water-and-density relief and Nodes C, D, and E serve host, pastoral, and educational needs, Node B is a slower-build, food-production-led hub that can expand rapidly when needed. Its core programming includes enlarged aquaponics, a permaculture food forest maturing over three years, community and women’s centers, market stalls, and a half-moon agricultural perimeter, supplied by a conventional-depth borehole. Cost is $62,000. If no surge occurs, Node B operates as a food-andcommunity installation and long-term regional asset; if a surge does occur, it is already in place where it is needed.

Bameire

C: Integration Hub

Refugee-host commerce Bassikounou

W3 Health satellite

Ouatelbous

W2 W1

Small market

Rest / water

Cheggarg

E: Energy/Education Solar school + vocational

D: Pastoral Gateway Livestock + transit (Mali)

Mali

You are here B B: Southern Anchor Aquaponics + permaculture

Vantor

Node B is a food-led anchor designed to absorb future population growth south of the camp.

Node C Integration Hub at Bassikounou

Located in Bassikounou, it hosts the largest market complex: a covered hall with 12+ stalls for dairy, meat, vegetables, crafts, and tools. Surrounding facilities include a women’s center, a governance pavilion, an SNDE-connected water point for national-utility integration, a satellite clinic linked to local health services, a prayer space, and a charging hub. Unlike other nodes, Node C sits within the host town to ensure regional, not camp-bound, design and to serve the host community from the outset. It leverages Bassikounou’s existing fabric (roads, market, IOM committees), serves all three constituent populations, and can remain a municipal asset post-camp. Cost is $81,000, funded mainly from development sources (World Bank IDA-18, EU/RIMRAP, GIZ/BMZ Pronexus) rather than humanitarian budgets. OASIS NODE C: INTEGRATION HUB Sited to promote camp-town interaction DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS

Nema / Walata

WOMEN'S CENTER Agriculture training, ONDFF branch, GBV CHARGING

services. Expands existing Bassikounou Women's Network. Links camp → national observatory.

Phones + radio

PRAYER WATER POINT

GOVERNANCE

SNDE-connected

Dispute resolution between refugee, host, and

WOMEN'S CENTER

pastoral users. Commune interface. Oasis

LEGEND

committee meets weekly. Escalation to marabouts.

Bassikounou

Agriculture training ONDFF branch office GBV services

MARKET HALL 12+ stalls: dairy, meat, vegetables, crafts, tools, fabric

SNDE water main →

Satellite clinic Referral to Bassikounou

M'bera (15 km)

OPEN PLAZA Events, overflow market, gathering

SNDE-connected water point designed for

Bouli pond

national utility from day one. Satellite health

Solar panels / micro-grid

clinic with referral pathway to Bassikounou hospital.

GOVERNANCE Dispute resolution Commune interface

Borehole / water point

WATER + HEALTH

HEALTH

LIVESTOCK Watering + holding Separates herds from market

Elevated water tank Water distribution pipe

ESTIMATED BUDGET

Community / prayer building

Market hall (covered, 12+ stalls)

$20,000

Women's center + governance building

$15,000

SNDE water connection

$10,000

Solar micro-grid (for market + buildings)

$25,000

Health satellite, charging, prayer, livestock

$11,000

TOTAL NODE C

~$81,000

Sources: IOM Village Committees; ONDFF; SNDE transition plan (World Bank IDA-18); Author's design

School / classroom Market stalls Livestock watering Aquaponics / grow beds Half-moon / agriculture Composting area

PHASING

~100m

Women's center

Year 1

SNDE connection + open market stalls

Year 1-2

Women's center + governance building

Year 2-3

Health satellite + solar + covered market hall

Native tree (shade / food) Road connection Human figure (scale) Immediate implementation

I. The Oasis Model

Node C is the network’s main commerce hub embedded in the host town.

Node D Pastoral Gateway

Located where transhumance routes meet, it provides three managed livestock troughs (separating animal and human water) to handle seasonal herder arrivals from November to June, a 150 m deep borehole with a solar pump for dry-season supply, a seasonal livestock market, a clustered-tent transit shelter (low earth windbreaks, flexible woven roofs) instead of a grid, and arrival services for registration and referral. The JQ aquifer spans roughly 136,000 km² across the Mali border but lacks a bilateral governance framework. Node D does not replace such a framework, but as a managed waterand-exchange point that generates monitoring data, it builds the empirical record a future agreement could rely on. Costing $41,000, it is especially important in light of the April 2026 circular limiting cross-border movement, which will concentrate herders at this location. OASIS NODE D: PASTORAL GATEWAY Sited on Mali approach route where transhumance flows converge DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS N MANAGED GRAZING ZONE

LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT 3 managed troughs - handles seasonal surge when herders arrive Nov-June. Separates livestock from human water. Managed grazing perimeter. Manure collected → composting for nearby agriculture.

WATER Deep borehole (150m target) + solar pump. Serves both human and livestock needs.

← M'bera camp

Critical during dry season when surface water gone.

TRANSIT SHELTER SOLAR

LEGEND

SEASONAL MARKET DEEP BOREHOLE 150m target + solar pump

Livestock trade, dairy, fodder. Peaks during dry season when herders concentrate. Creates managed

Borehole / water point

exchange point rather than ad-hoc camp intrusion.

Bouli pond Solar panels / micro-grid

LIVESTOCK WATERING

TRANSIT SHELTER

Clustered layout (tent principles) Not grid - pastoral clustering

SEASONAL MARKET

Elevated water tank

Clustered layout using tent principles - not grid. Serves new arrivals and herders in transit.

Water distribution pipe

Arrival services: registration, info, referral to camp.

Community / prayer building Women's center School / classroom

Livestock trade, dairy, fodder Peaks Nov-June (dry season)

Market stalls

3 troughs - manages seasonal surge Separates herds from human areas

ESTIMATED BUDGET ARRIVAL SERVICES Registration, info, referral

Herder arrivals

Livestock watering

Deep borehole + solar pump

$22,000

Aquaponics / grow beds

Livestock watering infrastructure

$5,000

Half-moon / agriculture

Seasonal market structures

$8,000

Composting area

Transit shelter + arrival services

$6,000

Native tree (shade / food)

TOTAL NODE D

~$41,000

~125m

Sources: IOM DTM Transhumance Tracking; PRAPS/World Bank; Ministry of Interior circular (2026); Author's design

→

Road connection Human figure (scale) Immediate implementation

PHASING Month 1

Borehole + solar pump (immediate need)

Month 3

Livestock troughs + managed grazing zone

Month 6

Market structures + transit shelter cluster

Node D is the network’s pastoral transit hub at the convergence of cross-border herder flows.

Node E Education and Energy Hub

Located west of the camp where solar exposure is unobstructed and road access serves both populations, it hosts a 10 kW solar micro-grid with battery storage that powers all on-site buildings, exports surplus to adjacent camp blocs, and runs vocational programs. Education facilities include two classrooms, an outdoor learning area, and electric lighting for evening classes. Workshops in carpentry, electronics repair, solar maintenance, and plumbing tie into GIZ/BMZ Pronexus income-generating activities already at M’bera. Graduates form the network’s technical workforce, maintaining boreholes, pumps, and panels at other nodes. Additional programming includes a congregation and communications space and a radio-and-WiFi hub. Cost is $68,000, phased from micro-grid and school in year 1 to graduate-maintained operations from year 3. OASIS NODE E: ENERGY/EDUCATION HUB Sited at camp edge where solar exposure is unobstructed and road access serves both camp and host community DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS N

EDUCATION School: 2 classrooms (concrete/corrugated iron, matching camp standard). Outdoor learning area under shade trees. Electric lighting enables evening/adult classes.

SOLAR MICRO-GRID

Complements 6 existing UNICEF-supported schools. Power export to camp blocs

LEGEND

VOCATIONAL TRAINING BATTERY STORAGE

Camp road (to M'bera)

10 kW - 15 × 415W panels

Workshop: carpentry, sewing, electronics

Borehole / water point

repair, solar panel maintenance. Links to GIZ/BMZ Pronexus (60+ income activities).

Bouli pond Solar panels / micro-grid

Graduates maintain oasis network infrastructure.

Elevated water tank

CONGREGATION + COMMS SCHOOL PLAY CHILDREN'S SPACE

Class 1

Class 2

VOCATIONAL

CHARGING

Carpentry, sewing, electronics repair, solar maintenance

COMMS HUB Radio + WiFi

Community meetings, events, film screenings, worship

Kiosks (2)

Phone/battery charging: income generation point.

WATER POINT Solar-powered borehole

GATHERING

Community / prayer building Women's center School / classroom

Phones, batteries, lights

home skills

tools

2 classrooms + outdoor

Outdoor Learning

Water distribution pipe

Covered gathering space: community meetings, film/info screenings (solar-powered projector), worship, celebrations. Radio + WiFi hub.

Market stalls

ESTIMATED BUDGET

Livestock watering

Solar micro-grid (10kW + battery)

$30,000

Aquaponics / grow beds

School building (2 classrooms)

$20,000

Half-moon / agriculture

Vocational workshop

$10,000

Composting area

Charging stations (phones, batteries)

$3,000

Native tree (shade / food)

Internet/radio hub + antenna

$5,000

TOTAL NODE E

~$68,000

Road connection Human figure (scale) Immediate implementation

Covered open-air space

PHASING SHADE TREES (moringa, balanites)

~125m

Sources: GIZ/BMZ Pronexus; UNICEF education data; UNHCR Camp Planning Shapefiles; Author's design. Solar pricing: Innovation Africa; EnviroLeg SA.

Year 1

Solar micro-grid + battery storage + charging stations

Year 1–2

School building (2 classrooms) + outdoor learning area

Year 2–3

Vocational workshop + radio/WiFi hub + kiosks

Year 3+

Power export to camp blocs + maintenance by graduates

I. The Oasis Model

Node E is the network’s civic and energy hub for both camp and host communities.

Corridor Waypoints W1-W3

Sited every five to eight kilometers along the road to Bassikounou, they serve more than 150,000 out-of-camp refugees in over 90 surrounding villages, many of whom are materially underserved: an estimated 60% live more than fifteen kilometers from a health center, and village water systems built for much smaller host populations now serve tens of thousands more. Each waypoint has a solar-pumped borehole, a natural-fiber shelter, shade trees, and a few market stalls whose revenue covers maintenance. W1 provides rest and water, W2 adds a market, and W3 adds a health satellite. Each costs about $24,000. If the camp is dismantled, the waypoints can continue serving surrounding villages, outliving the routes that produced them.

CORRIDOR WAYPOINTS W1- W3 Spaced 5-8 km apart along Bassikounou road (caravanserai logic) DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS WATER N

Borehole with solar pump + hand pump backup. Separate livestock trough set back from road. Serves both travelers and nearby villages.

SHADE / REST Covered structure with seating. Natural fiber canopy (Bedouin tent principles). Shade trees clustered around rest area - moringa, balanites.

SMALL MARKET

BOREHOLE

2-3 stalls: water refill, snacks, basic supplies. Revenue covers borehole maintenance.

CARAVANSERAI LOGIC

Solar pump + hand pump backup ~5-8 km between waypoints

← Bassikounou

M'bera →

(1-2 hours walking / caravanserai spacing) Livestock trough

MARKET

SHADE / REST

Covered seating, natural fiber canopy

EACH WAYPOINT VARIES: W1 (~4 km from camp) Rest + water. First stop. W2 (~8 km, near Ouatelbous) W3 (~12 km, approaching town)

The corridor waypoints apply this at a smaller scale: 5-8 km apart (1-2 hrs walking). Each offers water, shade, and exchange.

Borehole / water point Bouli pond Solar panels / micro-grid Elevated water tank Water distribution pipe Community / prayer building Women's center School / classroom Market stalls Livestock watering

2-3 stalls Water, snacks, supplies

Small market + health info point.

Caravanserai: rest stations along trade routes, spaced at the distance a camel could travel in a day (~30-40 km). Offered water, shelter, trade.

LEGEND

~40m

Health satellite + market hub.

Sources: Caravanserai typology (MIT Aga Khan); UNHCR out-of-camp data; IOM DTM; Drop in the Bucket (borehole costs); Author's design

CAN BE BUILT TODAY

Aquaponics / grow beds

Shade structure: local timber + fabric (Day 1)

Half-moon / agriculture

Tree planting: seedlings + community labor (Week 1)

Composting area

Borehole: 2-4 weeks with drilling rig

Native tree (shade / food)

Market stalls: local materials, 1-2 weeks

Road connection

Total per waypoint: ~$24,000

Human figure (scale)

× 3 waypoints = $72,000 for full corridor

Immediate implementation

The three corridor waypoints provide basic water, shelter, and services along the camp–town route for underserved out-ofcamp populations.

Every node combines elements from four construction tiers, ranging from zero-import community labor to permanent civic structures. Sequenced this way, construction at Node A can start immediately with earth berms, catchments, seedlings, and shade structures, putting the first physical infrastructure in place within a week at negligible cost. Higher tiers, which require capital and equipment, follow over subsequent months. The visual language draws on regional precedent: Kéré’s work demonstrates compressed earth as a community-built standard; Tuareg and Fulani woven fibers define space without fixed form; and the caravanserai typology provides a historical model of exchange at fixed intervals along trade routes. 1 BUILT TODAY

2 LOCAL CONSTRUCTION

Zero imports, community labor

Earth and local materials

Can start earlier

Cost: $0–$500

Day 1 → Week 1

Cost: $500–$5K

Earth berm boulis (shovels)

Compressed earth block walls

Half-moon water catchments

Rammed / stabilized earth

Tree planting (seedlings)

Stone plinths and foundations

Shade cloth on timber frames

Passive cooling walls (thermal mass)

Ground demarcation and paths

Windbreak structures

Compost pits (dig and manure)

Market stalls (timber and earth)

Week 2 → Month 3

Smart walls (earth) and flexible roofs (textile, plant matter)

Local cloth used for shelter

Compressed earth blocks

4 CIVIC and SCALABLE

WATER and ENERGY Some imported components

Cost: $5K–$20K

Permanent structures

Month 1 → Month 6

Cost: $10K–$25K

Borehole (drilling rig required)

Prayer / gathering building

Solar pump and panels

Women’s center

Elevated water tank (steel / plastic)

School (2 classrooms)

Gravity-fed pipe distribution

Vocational workshop

Aquaponics tanks and plumbing

Health satellite clinic

Battery storage

Radio / WiFi hub

Solar pumped borehole: imported, but 20+ yr lifespan, zero fuel cost.

Month 3 → Year 1

Community-built: residents learn techniques during construction.

Every node combines elements from multiple tiers: a Node A bouli (Tier 1) sits beside a solar pump (Tier 3) and a community building (Tier 4). Requires planning and equipment

I. The Oasis Model

Construction Spectrum What Can be Built Today

The network operates across four time-scales: the daily rhythm of camp and town, the seasonal monsoon cycle, the shocks of conflict and surge, and the period after the camp is dismantled or adopts a new functionality. Daily: Nodes improve daily water access and provide space for markets under shaded canopies at temperatures above forty-five degrees. Children attend school and play. The solar micro-grid keeps charging stations and evening gatherings running past daylight. Seasonal: During the wet season, floods fill the boulis, rain-fed agriculture activates, and herds graze northern pasture. During the dry season, boulis hold water and herds migrate. Groundwater becomes the only reliable source and conflict increases in frequency. The network captures wet-season water for dry-season use. Dry Season

Wet Season

Crisis: Borders are fragile, and movement can be restricted at any time. The Pastoral Gateway absorbs herders facing mobility challenges, while Node A scales water production in crisis scenarios. After: Most refugee infrastructure expires with its emergency. The oasis nodes are regional infrastructure that serve refugee and host communities. Therefore, the camp’s potential dismantlement or transformation into a permanent settlement would not represent a loss to the network.

Temporalities

Joy, Play, Care

A simple network of water points and committee rooms would not meet real needs. Care is institutionalized through women’s centers at Nodes A and C, linked to the ONDFF observatory and existing IOM gender focal points. The Mourchidates network of religiously trained women working against violent extremism gives Node D and the waypoints a dispute‑resolution capacity beyond the formal humanitarian system. Health satellite clinics bring referral-linked care closer to corridor villages. P lay is built into daily rhythms. Node E’s education facilities are programmed for children and adolescents, and the solar micro‑grid keeps charging stations and social spaces active after dark. Market plazas at Nodes A and C are sized for late‑afternoon and evening gatherings, while waypoints provide shade and rest along the road so movement can pause for conversation. Every node includes space for congregation and prayer. Community vitality also includes livestock: the Pastoral Gateway, managed watering points, and a manure‑to‑compost cycle inspired by Fulani symbiosis acknowledge the central value of herds to both people and territory.

Governance, Cost, Phasing Governance, cost, and phasing are structured for gradual handover and local control from day one.

I. The Oasis Model

The Oasis Model treats joy, play, and care as core infrastructure, not add-ons.

Cost: The network totals about $412,500, with annual maintenance of roughly $25,000, structured to be self-funded by Year 3 through tiered water fees, market rents, aquaponics revenue, and chargingstation income. Financing draws on existing humanitarian budgets at M’bera (UNHCR, UNICEF, ACF), regional development banks (World Bank, EU/RIMRAP, GIZ/BMZ Pronexus, UN PBF), targeted corporate CSR, climate finance, and community revenue. This represents less than 0.2% of the $248 million PRAPS investment underway across the Sahel. Phasing: • Immediate deployment (Months 1–6, $30,000–$50,000): earth-berm boulis at Node A, waypoint W1, oasis committee formation, and connection to ACF’s WASH system. • Reinforcement (Months 6–18, $150,000): deep borehole at Node A, aquaponics pilot, first market stalls, waypoints W2 and W3, and Node D. • Expansion (Years 2–3, $200,000): Node C with municipal coordination and Node E with a solar micro‑grid and school. At each stage, the network is designed to be managed by existing communities rather than an external operator.

Governance: Organized in three tiers, designed for handover from Day One. Tier 1, the Node Committee (seven members from camp, host, and pastoral constituencies, minimum three women), manages daily water allocation, market scheduling, dispute resolution, and revenue from water fees and stall rents. Tier 2, Commune Coordination, works through existing IOM village committees in Bassikounou, Fassala, and El Megve to coordinate across nodes and link humanitarian and municipal governance. Tier 3, National Transition, transfers infrastructure to SNDE over a five‑to‑ten‑year horizon, with World Bank IDA‑18 as financing partner and Tekavoul social protection providing a subsidized refugee water pathway.

M’bera needs a different scale of design imagination that takes the territory between Néma and the Mali border as the unit of analysis, and distributes infrastructure across it in forms calibrated to real resource and population pressure rather than to the perimeter of a temporary camp.

The Oasis Model is a first iteration that proposes a regional network consisting of five nodes and three waypoints.

I. The Oasis Model

Regional Network

49 Clockwise: Nodes C, W, D Images generated using DALL-E

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure

Ralph Lin

Sanitation in refugee camps is not merely a technical or emergency issue, but a fundamental urban and social framework that shapes daily dignity, spatial equality, and gender justice. This project redefines it as an “infrastructure of urban care,” a spatial system that must support social resilience, safety, and collective life, not just basic survival.

Ralph Lin

This project begins with a simple question: how do people maintain dignity in places where everyday infrastructure is fragile? In refugee camps, sanitation is often treated as a technical or emergency issue—something to be solved through toilets, water points, drainage, and waste management. Yet the more I looked into these spaces, the more I realized that sanitation is not only a functional system. It is deeply connected to daily routines, social relationships, gender roles, and personal safety. It shapes when people move, where they gather, how they care for their families, and whether they are able to keep a basic sense of privacy. As refugee camps begin to function less as temporary shelters and more as urban settlements, sanitation is no longer only a condition for survival. It becomes an urban issue that affects spatial equality, social resilience, and the quality of daily life. Within this context, sanitation infrastructure has a particularly strong impact on women’s daily mobility, labor, and safety. Access to toilets, water points, washing areas, and waste systems often defines the rhythm of everyday life. In situations where domestic responsibilities, caregiving, and personal security are unevenly distributed across gender, these infrastructures become crucial spatial conditions through which women experience and negotiate their living environment. Therefore, this project rethinks sanitation as an infrastructure of urban care. Rather than seeing it as a hidden technical system or a service placed at the margins, the project understands sanitation as a spatial framework that connects public health, gender justice, everyday safety, and collective life. Through the lens of water and sanitation in refugee settlements, this project asks how infrastructure can move beyond basic survival and become a means of supporting dignity, care, and shared urban life.

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure from Point to Community

From Access Point to Community

57 Refugee camps function as water nodes Source: Water Resources Podcast, photo by Paul Bauman, 2024.

Infrastructure is not neutral Source: Soroptimist International of Europe.

Refugee Camps Becoming Cities Source: designboom, “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter at MoMA,” 2016.

With 112,021 residents and 12,907 shelter units, Mbera has gradually developed beyond the scale of an emergency settlement. Its spatial structure now resembles a long-term urban environment, where shelters, roads, public facilities, and service infrastructures collectively shape everyday life. In this context, sanitation can no longer be understood only as a humanitarian provision. It becomes an urban infrastructure that determines accessibility, safety, and the quality of daily routines. The mapping of 2,748 sanitation facilities reveals how unevenly these services are distributed across the camp. While some areas are densely supplied with latrines, showers, and washing stands, other residential zones remain underserved. This uneven spatial distribution creates different levels of access within the same settlement, turning sanitation into a question of spatial inequality rather than simply numerical provision. According to the mapping analysis, 594 shelter units exceed the UNHCR 50-meter toilet distance standard. This means that for many residents, accessing sanitation requires longer daily movement across the camp. Such distances are not neutral: they affect privacy, time, safety, and bodily comfort, especially for women, children, older people, and those with limited mobility. By reading Mbera through sanitation infrastructure, this project identifies a hidden urban condition within the refugee camp. The issue is not only whether facilities exist, but where they are located, who can reach them, and how they shape everyday life. Sanitation therefore becomes a lens to understand the transformation of refugee camps into longterm urban settlements, and to rethink infrastructure as a spatial framework for dignity, care, and equitable access.

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure from Point to Community

Mbera Is No Longer a Temporary Camp

59 Mbera is no longer a temporary camp Source: UNHCR Site Mapping Data

Infrastructure is not neutral Source: UNHCR Site Mapping Data

Latrine Shower Admin Extension 30-45m2/person 45-70m2/person >30m2/person >70m2/person

0.2 km

Refugee Camps Becoming Cities Source: UNHCR Site Mapping Data

This analysis reviews sanitation and water infrastructure through different walking-distance standards. Rather than only counting the number of facilities, the mapping focuses on how far residents need to move in order to access essential daily services. The first layer examines the 50-meter toilet distance. By mapping each shelter unit in relation to nearby sanitation facilities, the analysis identifies whether toilets are located within a reasonable everyday walking range. This reveals the basic level of accessibility within the settlement and highlights areas where sanitation provision may be insufficient. The second layer expands the scale to the 200-meter community center distance. Community centers are understood as shared social and service nodes, supporting collective activities, information exchange, and daily care. Mapping their coverage shows how social infrastructure is distributed across the camp, and whether different residential areas have equal access to communal support.

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure from Point to Community

WASH Access

61 Daily Sanitation Reach Source: UNHCR Site Mapping Data

Community Support Radius Source: UNHCR Site Mapping Data

Water and Care Infrastructure Network Source: UNHCR Site Mapping Data

The final layer combines shelter units, sanitation facilities, community centers, and water infrastructure into one network. This overlay shows that sanitation is not an isolated system, but part of a larger spatial relationship between domestic life, shared facilities, and community services. Through this distance review, the project identifies gaps in accessibility and begins to rethink infrastructure as a connected framework of care, mobility, and everyday urban life.

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure from Point to Community

Layered Infrastructure System Analysis

Ralph Lin

This proposal connects clean water, grey water, waste, compost, agriculture, and training into one circular infrastructure system. Water is collected from boreholes, deep aquifers, and rainwater harvesting, then stored, treated, and redistributed for daily use and irrigation. Grey water and treated wastewater are reused for agriculture, while household waste is collected, sorted, and transformed into compost. Productive fields become part of the sanitation system, linking food production, environmental care, and community labor.

Through the training school, residents can learn how to manage, maintain, and repair the system. In this way, sanitation becomes more than a technical service; it becomes a shared framework for dignity, resilience, and long-term urban life.

The sanitation unit is designed as a small-scale, repeatable infrastructure module that can be placed within the 50-meter daily access range. Instead of treating toilets, washing, and laundry as separate facilities, the plan organizes them as a shared sanitation cluster for men, women, and children, allowing basic hygiene activities to happen within a safer and more visible community setting. The unit combines toilet, wash, and laundry spaces with a lightweight roof system for rainwater harvesting. Collected water is guided through PVC tubes and mesh surfaces, then reused for washing, cleaning, or irrigation. In this way, the roof is not only a shelter from sun and rain, but also an active part of the water infrastructure. The structure uses simple and locally buildable materials, including wood trusses, wood battens, rammed earth walls, fiberglass panels, PVC tubes, and polyester mesh. These materials are selected for their accessibility, durability, and ease of assembly. The construction process relies on basic tools and simple techniques, allowing the unit to be maintained, repaired, or reproduced by local workers and residents. By combining sanitation, water collection, and communityscale construction, the module transforms a basic toilet facility into an infrastructure of care. It supports privacy, safety, hygiene, and daily maintenance while remaining flexible enough to adapt to different locations within the camp.

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure from Point to Community

Modular Sanitation Unit

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure from Point to Community

Roof Fiberglass Reinforced Polyester

Structure Wood Struss/ Wood Batten

Toilet EcoSan/ Rammed earth

Harvesting Roof and EcoSan Toilet System

Harvest water PVC Tube/ Polyester mesh/

Water-Harvesting Sanitation Section This section shows the sanitation cluster as both a daily-use facility and a water-harvesting device. Above the toilet, wash, and laundry spaces, a lightweight roof structure collects rainwater through mesh surfaces and guides it toward the central water tank. The 5.8-meter roof height creates a visible infrastructure canopy, while the 3-meter occupied space keeps the daily activities at a human scale.

Under this shared roof, toilets, washing areas, seating edges, plants, and circulation spaces form a small community environment rather than a purely functional service zone. By combining shelter, water collection, storage, and sanitation, the section transforms basic hygiene infrastructure into a spatial system of care. It supports privacy, safety, water reuse, and everyday dignity within the camp.

Grey water and treated wastewater are reused for agriculture, while household waste is collected, sorted, and transformed into compost. Productive fields become part of the sanitation system, linking food production, environmental care, and community labor.

II. Water and Sanitation Nodes as Social Infrastructure from Point to Community

Community Center

The sanitation cluster can expand beyond basic hygiene functions and become a small community center. By combining toilets, washing areas, laundry spaces, shaded seating, planting, and open circulation, the facility creates opportunities for more daily activities to happen around sanitation infrastructure. Instead of being an isolated service placed at the edge of the camp, sanitation becomes a shared neighborhood space. Residents can wash clothes, collect water, rest, care for children, meet neighbors, exchange information, or participate in small workshops and maintenance activities.

Through this arrangement, the project turns sanitation into a social infrastructure. It supports not only cleanliness and health, but also safety, gathering, learning, and everyday community life.

Resources

Warka Water. (n.d.). Warka Tower. https://warkawater.org/warkatower/

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp 79

Joseph Fujinami

Education in M’bera Camp is critically under-resourced, with overcrowded classrooms, high dropout rates, especially for girls, and aging infrastructure. The proposal addresses this through an incremental, community-centered school design that integrates passive cooling, multi-functional courtyards, and modular satellite structures for informal learning. These lightweight, adaptable timber units can be deployed in peripheral areas and nearby Bassikounou to extend educational access, foster cultural continuity, and serve as multipurpose community spaces. Together, these strategies aim to improve retention, support vulnerable populations, and create resilient, scalable learning environments adapted to the camp’s social and geographic realities.

Joseph Fujinami

With only six to eight primary schools supported by limited infrastructure, education remains a critical concern for both refugee and host populations in Mbera Camp. The camp currently contains only 127 classrooms serving approximately 6,500 primary school students, resulting in an average class size of nearly 80 students. Retention beyond the primary level continues to present a significant challenge, particularly for girls. Enrollment rates have declined due to factors such as early marriage and childbearing, underscoring the important role schools play not only as educational institutions but also as safe havens for vulnerable members of the camp community. At the same time, aging infrastructure and temporary tent-based facilities reveal the urgency and strain involved in meeting the growing demand for educational spaces within the camp.

32,400+

School Aged Children Occupy Camp Last Updated February 2025, Source: UNHCR

2,196

Adults from refugee and host communities enrolled in literacy and math classes in 2023 , Source: UNHCR

50%

School-aged children are enrolled in schools - majority in primary school. Last Updated February 2025, Source Impact Pool

33%

of refugee and asylum seeker children between 6-18 years are not in school. Last Updated February 2025, Source: UNHCR

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

Education

85 Source: UNESCO. https://www.iiep.unesco.org/fr/articles/comment-les-partenariats-transforment-leducation-et-promeuvent-legalite-de-genre-lequite-et

Source: The New Humanitarian - https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2013/12/02/education-struggling-gear-mauritania%E2%80%99s-mbera-camp

Source: UNESCO - https://www.iiep.unesco.org/fr/articles/comment-les-partenariats-transforment-leducation-et-promeuvent-legalite-de-genre-lequite-et

istics and

Existing classroom facilities in Mbera Camp consist of 9 m × 7 m sandbag-constructed modules that utilize locally sourced desert sand. The walls are finished with cement plaster on both interior and exterior surfaces, while a metal roof truss system supporting a tarpaulin covering spans the structure above. The rectangular layout is characterized by opposing door openings that facilitate cross-ventilation, complemented by child-height wall apertures that provide additional airflow and daylighting. Designed by FARE Studio and INTERSOS, these classrooms rely on local refugee labor and are intended to be both durable and rapidly deployable. Strategies such as thermal mass construction and detached roofing systems are employed to mitigate heat gain, deflect desert winds, and improve the thermal comfort of interior learning spaces. In parallel, UNHCR co-leads the Education Working Group alongside UNICEF, supporting educational operations through stipends for 134 school staff members as well as investments in school infrastructure and maintenance. Instruction is provided in French, Arabic, and local languages.

Existing Education Facilities in Mbera Camp. Source: UNOSAT Source: UNOSAT SES 5509: Spatial Design Strategies for Climate- and Conflict-Induced Migration

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

Existing Conditions

87 Existing Classrooms in Mbera Camp: Source: Design in Daba, https://www.designindaba.com/articles/creative-work/60-sandbag-classrooms-built-mbera-refugee-camp-mauritania

Further Inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers within the public education system has enabled 106 refugees to benefit from DAFI university scholarships sponsored by the European Union, Germany, and Denmark. Greater emphasis, however, should be placed on preserving local languages and culturally embedded skills through their integration into the educational curriculum. Djenné, Mali, serves as a significant precedent for understanding vernacular approaches to passive cooling and shading through both materiality and urban proximity. Its mud-brick architecture utilizes high thermal mass to moderate interior temperatures, while shaded courtyards foster social congregation and reinforce a strong sense of community. In particular, the mosques of Timbuktu employ conical and pyramidal forms that facilitate the release of hot air from interior and adjacent ground spaces, leveraging natural convection through geometric design. Rooftops are similarly conceived as inhabitable spaces, functioning not only as extensions of communal life but also as critical surfaces for the harvesting of rainwater and solar energy during the day.

Existing Classroom Module by UNHCR in Mbera Camp.

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

Precedent

89 Djenne, Mali, Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/14/old-towns-of-djenne-precious-mud-village-could-disappear-

Timbuktu, Mali, Source: https://www.britannica.com/place/Timbuktu-Mali

Source: Design in Daba, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-the-city-of-mud-stays-standing-meet-themasons-of-djenne-mali-224225/

The proposed school uses an incremental approach, integrating localized courtyards to shape learning environments. Each cluster has four classrooms, each assigned a specific function, such as a library or a maker space for local trades and vocational skills. These rooms are arranged around a central courtyard that serves both school activities and wider community events. Layered interior and exterior spaces create transitional buffers that limit direct solar exposure and form semi-private areas for gathering and interaction. These intermediary zones offer respite while preserving visibility and passive supervision. Conceived as a community hub, the school prioritizes safe, accessible spaces for vulnerable individuals in the camp. Shaded circulation corridors draw from the urban morphology of Djenné, Mali, while natural ventilation and thermal comfort are provided by chimney structures integrated into each classroom cluster.

15m 9m

13.7m

7.7m

1 6

1. Shared Courtyard 2. Typical Classroom 3. Trades, Maker Space 4. Creative Arts Space 5. Storage/Wind Tower Base 6. Breakout Space/Green Wall

Ground plan of the primary classroom cluster builds upon UNHCR’s existing classroom dimensions around a central courtyard.

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

Proposal

8:00-11:00

11:00-14:00

14:00-17:00

11:00-14:00

14:00-17:00

Summer Solstice

8:00-11:00

Solar incident radiation analyses study the proximity of classroom clusters for maximum shading.

Student Latrines, Sanitation Stations Recreational Grounds

Clusters of classrooms assemble to form open spaces that offer spaces for latrines and recreational activities.

Phase 1 Site work, Initial Classroom Modules

Phase 2 Classroom Addition, Site work

Phased scheme builds classrooms incrementally about the central courtyard.

Phase 3 Completed Cluster

Joseph Fujinami

These passive systems use convection to extract hot air from interior learning spaces. The project’s phasing is likewise incremental, with classrooms gradually added around a central courtyard until a complete cluster is formed. Open spaces between clusters are allocated for latrines and recreational facilities, supporting the primary educational infrastructure.

WIND CHIMNEY

9.5 m

WIND CHIMNEY

TERRACE

STORAGE

CLASSRM

TERRACE

BREAK OUT

CLASSRM

STORAGE

Convection chimneys enable passive cooling in connection the Djenne’s vernacular architecture.

93 Layered corridors of vegetated interior partitions offer places for informal gathering.

94 Community farms compliment education curriculum and offer opportunities for community engagement across the camp.

Layered learning spaces offer safe zones for vulnerable groups.

95 Shaded corridors between classroom spaces offer moments of respite.

The need for satellite schools arises from the diverse temporal conditions and legal challenges present within Mbera Camp. Extending educational curricula to the camp periphery and to nearby Bassikounou creates greater opportunities for knowledge exchange and the broader distribution of educational resources. In response to these shifting conditions, the proposal envisions the deployment of lightweight and adaptable structures composed of repetitive timber elements connected through a single modular joint system. This lattice-based framing strategy enables simple assembly while generating a range of geometric configurations capable of providing shaded coverings and semi-enclosed environments suitable for informal learning spaces that may accompany existing camp tents. In areas characterized by difficult topographic conditions, these lightweight interventions minimize the need for extensive foundations and specialized skilled labor. The modular construction 7.8m

4.7m

The use of a singular timber element applies overlapping joinery to enable ease of assembly in remote terrains.

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

Satellite Schools

97 Study models explore the repetition of a singular wood joinery type.

A cluster of hemi-cylindrical shading posts offer a community of temporary learning spaces.

system prioritizes efficiency in both material use and labor deployment. Timber framing may be clad with corrugated metal panels, reclaimed plastic sheets, or locally sourced fabrics that provide additional shading and environmental protection. Recognizing the importance of cultural identity in sustaining a sense of belonging within displaced communities, these structures are conceived as multipurpose spaces extending beyond classroom use. Outside educational hours, they may serve as venues for community gatherings, local music, and performing arts, thereby reinforcing cultural continuity alongside the educational curriculum.

99 The versatility of the satellite shelter also functions as a musical performance venue by evening.

Utilizing local labor while minimizing the transportation of construction materials enables the project to draw upon established adobe construction traditions and production networks in Djenné and Timbuktu, Mali, as well as Oualata and Mbera Camp in Mauritania. Adobe construction in Oualata primarily relies on locally sourced clay and hand-molded adobe blocks, whereas construction practices in Mbera Camp incorporate on-site earth extraction supported by NGO-led compressed earth block manufacturing using manual and semi-mechanized production methods. Steel procurement and distribution are similarly informed by regional supply networks. In Mauritania, Nouakchott functions as a primary distribution hub through port suppliers such as Metline Industries, while Nouadhibou serves as a secondary port associated with iron ore mining and industrial transport. In Mali, Bamako receives imported steel through Senegalese trade routes, with the Port of Dakar operating as a significant regional gateway for steel distribution across West Africa.

Source: https://regenerativeskills.com/articles-1-2016-5-29-adobe-the-tradition-and-techniques-of-mud-bricks/

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

100

Materiality

101 Wood and corrugated roof connection and facade detail.

Typical adobe brick footing and facade detail.

Roof and wall assemblies are designed to maximize passive ventilation within classroom environments. Similar to the passive cooling strategies employed in the work of Francis Kéré, the detached roof-to-wall assembly facilitates airflow through convection, allowing hot air to escape above the occupied spaces. Louvers integrated along window openings on the eastern and western facades further enhance cross-ventilation and occupant comfort, working in conjunction with the high thermal mass of earthen wall systems to moderate interior temperatures. Preliminary construction cost estimates indicate that corrugated metal roofing ranges from approximately $35–60 per truss sheet, while woven textile shading systems range from $15–35 per square meter. Flooring systems, consisting of either stabilized earth or concrete slab construction, are estimated at $15–35 per square meter. Wall assemblies constructed from compressed earth blocks or fired brick are projected at approximately $25–45 per square meter of wall area. Collectively, these figures align with broader West African construction cost averages, which are estimated at approximately $1,600 per square meter.

nomy and Labor Steel Redistribution Hub

Adobe Brick

Dakar Port Senegal

Djenne, Mali

Regional Import

Bamako, Mali

Timbuktu, Mali

Kayes (Midpt) Nouadhibou

Nouakchott

~ 5 Days Trucking Kayes (Midpt)

Border Crossing

Mbera Camp Local Earth Sourcing NGO-Supported Compressed Earth Brick Manufacturing Oulata, Mauritania

Mapping labor and material origins to Mbera Camp.

Local Clay Fields

Oulata, Mauritania

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

102

Materiality

Compressed Earth Block + Long Life span + Thermal Mass - Moisture Susceptible - Needs Stability Aids - Maintenance Concerns

Laterite Brick + Withstand weathering in tropical climate + High furnace not required + Fire-resistant - Low structural Strength - Quality Inconsistency Rammed Earth + Thermal Mass + Durable + Fire-resistant - Wood necessary for Mold - Specialized Equipment Necessary Image Courtesy: Source: Al-Shoubaki, Hind, Dimitris Psychogyios, Matthias Drilling, Yioryos Chatziefthymiou, Tatiani Fragkou, André Marinho Costa, and Aris Tsangrassoulis.

103

Adobe Brick + Locally available Soil + Cost Effective + Thermal Properties - Erosion Prone - High Maintenance - Earthquake Prone

Resources

Ecoi.net. “UNICEF Mauritania Monthly SitRep May 2013.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/1355858/1930_1370430307_unicefmauritania-monthly-sitrep-may-2013.pdf. Euronews. “Malian Refugees in Mauritania: Education in an Emergency Context.” February 21, 2019. Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www. euronews.com/2019/02/21/malian-refugees-in-mauritania-education-in-anemergency-context. Global Partnership for Education. “Mauritania.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.globalpartnership.org/where-we-work/mauritania. ID Handyman. “Roofing Cost per Square Meter.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://id.org.za/roofing-cost-per-square-meter/. Impactpool. “Job Listing.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.impactpool. org/jobs/1006248. International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO). “How Partnerships Transform Education and Promote Gender Equality, Equity and Inclusion in Mauritania.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.iiep. unesco.org/en/articles/how-partnerships-transform-education-and-promotegender-equality-equity-and-inclusion-mauritania. ReliefWeb. “Mbera Refugee Camp, Bassikounou, South-Eastern Mauritania (Map), 8 Dec 2015.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://reliefweb.int/map/ mauritania/mbera-refugee-camp-bassikounou-south-eastern-mauritania-8dec-2015. Rider Levett Bucknall. “The Cost of Building in Africa.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.rlb.com/americas/insight/perspective-2022-vol-1/the-costof-building-in-africa/. Smart Builders Africa. “Smart Builders Africa.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://smartbuilders.africa/. The Handyman Johannesburg. “Building Material Prices.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.thehandymanjohannesburg.co.za/building-materialprices/. The Metals Factory. “Mauritania Product Category.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://themetalsfactory.com/product-category/mauritania/.

III. Education: Schools and Cultural Preservation in and Outside the Camp

104

Design Indaba. “60 Sandbag Classrooms Built in Mbera Refugee Camp, Mauritania.” Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www.designindaba.com/ articles/creative-work/60-sandbag-classrooms-built-mbera-refugee-campmauritania.

The New Humanitarian. “Education Struggling to Gear Up in Mauritania’s Mbera Camp.” December 2, 2013. Accessed April 7, 2026. https://www. thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2013/12/02/education-struggling-gearmauritania%E2%80%99s-mbera-camp. Trading Economics. “Lumber.” Commodities. Accessed April 29, 2026. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber.

World Bank. “Forest Area (% of Land Area).” World Development Indicators. Accessed April 29, 2026. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND. FRST.ZS.

105

United Nations Comtrade. “UN Comtrade Database.” Accessed April 29, 2026. https://comtradeplus.un.org/.

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IV Food Security and Spatial Design in Mbera Camp Cecilia Portillo

M’bera refugee camp, initially an emergency response for 70,000 people, has grown into a long-term settlement of over 115,000 residents. Its food system remains trapped in an emergency delivery model, failing to support the cultural practices, social structures, and local autonomy needed for stability. This chapter argues that food should be reimagined as a spatial and social infrastructure. By mapping current gaps in availability, access, utilization, and stability, it proposes a phased, community-centered approach, centered on a communal food space, where women can collectively cook, preserve, and share knowledge. This sitopian intervention aims to bridge humanitarian aid with long-term resilience, honoring the food traditions refugees carried from Mali while building practical pathways toward self-reliance.

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Cecilia Portillo

Mbera refugee camp was created in 2012 as an emergency response to displacement from Mali. It was designed for approximately 70,000 people and imagined as a temporary settlement. More than a decade later, over 115,000 people live there, and its closure remains uncertain. Mbera has grown to a size larger than most Mauritanian urban agglomerations, becoming a long-term settlement whether or not anyone intended it to be. Long-term settlements depend on systems that can provide stability over time. The tension in Mbera is that many of its systems still operate through the logic of emergency response. Food is one of the systems that makes this tension visible. The food system is still organized around emergency delivery: getting food or cash into the camp, household by household, month by month, with limited infrastructure for storage, preservation, processing, collective preparation, or local control. In Hungry City (Steel, 2008), Carolyn Steel argues that food is not only something we consume. It is a system that connects bodies, homes, markets, landscapes, labor, waste, and care. This is useful for Mbera because food makes the whole settlement visible. It shows how the camp depends on humanitarian supply chains, how women’s labor holds daily life together, how memory is carried through cooking, and how the lack of long-term food infrastructure keeps the camp dependent on emergency delivery. The question in Mbera is no longer only how to respond to emergency. It is how to support a food system for a place that is becoming a permanent, long-term settlement. This chapter begins with the people who live there. Who are

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Introduction

The chapter then maps the current food system in Mbera through a food security matrix, using the four food security pillars: availability, access, utilization, and stability. These pillars are read across different time horizons, from emergency dependency to longer-term autonomy. This mapping makes visible where the system is strongest, where it is fragile, and where spatial intervention may matter most. From these gaps, a series of proposals emerges. One is developed in greater depth: a communal food space that builds on what women already know, what they already do, and what risks being lost if there is no space for it to continue. In this sense, the proposals in this chapter are sitopian — Steel’s term for a world organized around food — in method. They use food not as a theme, but as a way to organize space, care, knowledge, and collective life.

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the people of Mbera? Where do they come from? What did they eat before displacement? How did they cook, preserve, share, and organize food? These practices matter because they are the ground from which any spatial intervention should begin.

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Introduction

Cecilia Portillo

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2. Situated Food Culture

Cecilia Portillo

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2.1 Food supply before displacement The refugees in Mbera come primarily from northern and central Mali. The vast majority are Malian, and around 82 percent of refugees in Mauritania are women and children. Many belong to Tuareg, Fulani, and Moorish communities from the Sahel and Sahara. Their food traditions are shaped by two overlapping systems that have coexisted and traded

Transhumance Domestic Transhumance Cross-Border Transhumance Migration Areas Moorish Ethnic Group Migration Range

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Fulani Ethnic Group Migration Range Tuareg Ethnic Group Migration Range

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The Tuareg of northern Mali are among the oldest nomadic peoples of the Sahara. Their transhumance traditions, or seasonal movement with herds across long distances in search of pasture and water, have persisted since before the fifteenth century. Food in these communities is organized around what the herd produces and what the land offers seasonally. Milk, meat, and dates are staples. Grain often comes through trade with agricultural communities along the Niger River, or through seasonal cultivation during the rainy months. Source: GSD, Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration, 2025. Content Source: UN FAO; EU IOM, GIS Reports, Michele Nori

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with each other for centuries: pastoral nomadism and Sahelian agriculture.

In recent decades, that complementarity has come under pressure. The seasonal relationship between pastoralists and farmers depends on predictable rainfall. When rainfall fails, pastoralists may be forced to migrate earlier, before the harvest is complete. What was once a cooperative seasonal arrangement can become competition for the same land and water at the same time. McGuirk and Nunn find that reduced rainfall in pastoral territories increases the risk of conflict in neighboring agricultural areas. The Sahel has also experienced rainfall persistently below the long-term average since the late 1960s. Mauritania, where Mbera is located, shares much of this pastoral tradition. The Hodh el Chargui region receives less than 150 mm of rainfall annually. Commercial agriculture is difficult to sustain at scale. Mauritania is largely self-sufficient in meat and fish through its pastoral economy, but imports most of its grain. Fresh vegetables are scarce and expensive. The host community around Mbera draws on similar food traditions to the refugees: livestock, dairy, imported or traded grain, and food systems organized around mobility and preservation rather than fixed cultivation. This is the food environment into which more than 115,000 people were displaced. It is also the environment from which the camp drew its initial food supply logic.

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In precolonial times, pastoralist and agricultural groups in the region maintained close economic and commercial links. Each group needed what the other produced: grain from farmers, livestock and dairy from herders. Together they formed a food system adapted over generations to one of the most demanding environments on earth.

Cropland Natural Vegetation Settlement Soil Carbon Level Water body

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Source: GSD, Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration, 2

Data Source - https://nextgis.c

2.2 Everyday diets and staple foods

Across much of Mali, meals are organized around grains such as rice, millet, sorghum, or couscous. These are served with sauces, stews, meat, fish, or vegetables when available. Toh is a smooth millet porridge often served with okra sauce or groundnut sauce. Tiguadege na is a peanut stew made with beef or lamb and served with rice or couscous. Soumbala, a fermented locust bean condiment, adds depth to sauces and stews. Making it takes time: locust beans are boiled, fermented over several days, dried, and shaped into balls that can last for months without refrigeration. From the pastoral tradition, milk is central. It can be consumed fresh, fermented into nono, churned into butter, or clarified into a preserved fat that lasts longer without refrigeration. Fura, made from millet dough balls mixed with fermented milk, is eaten across the Sahel as a daily meal or drink. Kilishi is especially important for this chapter. It is spiced dried meat, typically beef or goat, and is closely associated with pastoral communities who have direct access to livestock. It is also traded and consumed widely across the region. Making kilishi requires skill, time, surface, sun, and knowledge. It can last for weeks and can be sold at market. It is food, preservation technique, and potential source of income at once.

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Before displacement, food practices varied by community, region, season, and economic circumstance. For agricultural communities, meals often centered on grain-based stews and cooked vegetables. For pastoral communities, dairy and preserved meat were more central. Many families drew on both.

2.3 Cooking and preservation practices

One important organizing unit is the du, or domestic compound. The du brings together related households around shared space and shared labor. Within it, food work is collective. Knowledge moves through practice, not formal instruction.

Source: Flavor Vortex Blog

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Food was often prepared collectively, across generations, and through shared space. Women cooked near one another, around courtyards, fires, and domestic compounds. The posture was low. The fire was shared. The work was visible.

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Map Source: Esri, TomTom, Source:Garmin, WFP/Bachir FAO,Malum NOAA, USGS Content Source: UN FAO; EU IOM, GIS Reports, Michele Nori

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In displacement, this kind of knowledge becomes fragile. It may survive in memory, but it becomes harder to transmit when the spaces and rhythms that supported it are removed.

2.4 Eating, sharing, and hospitality Food is also social in the way it is eaten. Meals are often shared from a common bowl, with people gathered around it. In many Muslim communities, eating with the right hand is part of the practice. The shared bowl creates a physical arrangement of closeness. It makes eating a collective act rather than a private one. Who eats together is also structured. Men and women may eat separately. Children often eat with their mothers. Guests are offered food as a gesture of hospitality. To feed someone before speaking with them is itself a social practice. Celebrations such as weddings, naming ceremonies, and Eid are organized around large quantities of food prepared collectively and shared publicly. Tea often closes the meal. Served in several rounds, it creates an extended moment of presence.

2.5 Food as cultural practice Food sustains more than the body. It carries culture, memory, and continuity across displacement. David Sutton, in Remembrance of Repasts, argues that

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This matters because food knowledge lives in the body. Some knowledge can be written down, but much of it is learned by doing: grinding, drying, stirring, fermenting, tasting, waiting, watching. The tools and techniques developed over time represent generations of accumulated knowledge about how to feed people in one of the most demanding environments on earth. The grinding stone, the clay pot, the drying surface, and the shared fire are tools, but they are also carriers of knowledge.

For the communities of Mbera, this is not abstract. To know how to make kilishi is to carry a preservation technique and an economic skill. To know how to ferment milk is to extend what the herd produces beyond the day it was collected. To grind grain, season sauce, or serve tea in several rounds is to carry a memory of place, family, and daily life. Wooten’s study of women’s culinary agency in rural Mali shows how cooking transmits cultural values, facilitates community dynamics, and reproduces gender identities across generations. The kitchen is not only where food is made. It is where culture is practiced and maintained. In Mbera, these practices matter because the camp has become a long-term settlement. Food cannot be treated only as a ration or a distribution problem. It is cultural, spatial, and social infrastructure.

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food is a primary site of memory. What people eat, how they prepare it, and how they share it can hold identity, community, and belonging in ways that survive migration and displacement. Jon Holtzman also shows how food and memory are deeply connected in anthropological literature, especially around questions of nostalgia, cultural continuity, and social change.

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Food Security Matrix: Availability, Access, Utilization and Stability

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01. Availability Is there enough food?

03. Utilization Do they know how to use / cook the UNHCR distributed food?

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02. Access Can people get the food?

04. Stability Is it consistent over time?

The food practices described in section 2, including collective cooking, preservation, fermentation, and shared meals, show a food system developed over generations. Displacement did not erase this knowledge, but it changed the conditions in which it could be practiced. Many of the spaces, tools, rhythms, and social structures that supported these practices were interrupted when families arrived in Mbera. These disrupted practices entered a region already facing severe food insecurity. Mbera is located in Hodh el Chargui, a region classified through the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system as Crisis level, or IPC Phase 3. This classification reflects the combined pressure of displacement, limited natural resources, host community livelihoods, and household food access. IPC Phase 3 means that households cannot meet minimum food needs without humanitarian assistance. To understand where the current food system in Mbera stands, this chapter uses the four pillars of food security as an analytical framework: availability, access, utilization, and stability. Each pillar describes a different part of the system: whether food exists, whether people can obtain it, whether it can be prepared and used well, and whether access remains stable over time. These pillars are mapped across four time horizons, from emergency response to longer-term autonomy, and across four scales, from the individual to the regional. The matrix shows that Mbera’s food system functions at the emergency level, but remains structurally incomplete. The sections that follow explain what exists in each pillar, where the system is fragile, and where spatial intervention may matter most.

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3. Food in Mbera Camp

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Map Design: GSD, Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration, 2025. Data: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) (2025), Mauritania Populated Places. Humanitarian Dataset.World Bank (2021), Mauritania. World Bank Map Source: Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS Climate Change Knowledge Portal, World Food Programme. (2017). Mauritania: Integrated Context Analysis. Humanitarian Dataset Content Source: UN FAO; EU IOM, GIS Reports, Michele Nori

3.1 Availability

Food in Mbera does not come primarily from Mbera. The camp sits in Hodh el Chargui, one of the most arid regions of Mauritania. Commercial agriculture is difficult to sustain at scale. Mauritania produces livestock and fish, but imports most of its grain. Fresh vegetables are scarce and expensive. What the camp can draw on from the surrounding region is mainly the pastoral economy: goat, sheep, camel, milk, and meat. Everything else arrives from outside, mostly through the 17 km unsurfaced road that connects Mbera to Bassikounou. When that road floods, or when the border with Mali closes, the supply chain becomes vulnerable. There is no clear

Source: WFP/Asma Achahboun

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Availability refers to whether sufficient food exists through local production, trade, or distribution. In a camp context, it means whether food physically reaches people, and through how many channels.

Within this constraint, several interventions address availability. WFP distributes cash-based food assistance to registered households, allowing families to purchase rice, beans, flour, oil, and other staples. This is the primary intervention in the food system, and it functions. But the basket has been repeatedly reduced. In 2025 and 2026, rice and oil were reportedly removed. By June 2025, the number of beneficiaries receiving cash transfers had dropped from 90,000 to 7,000. SOS Desert supports household vegetable gardens watered by solar boreholes. These gardens produce one harvest per year, before the lean season. Seeds come from external sources, and there is no camp-based seed bank. Community garden plots extend production to a more collective scale. Inside the camp, an informal market of more than 500 shops operates daily, with a weekly trading day that draws regional merchants. This market makes food available inside Mbera itself, not only through formal distribution. Yet it appears only partially in the humanitarian response as an infrastructure to be supported or expanded. The route between Bassikounou and Mbera, coordinated between state and humanitarian actors, provides the logistical backbone for almost everything else. When it functions, food moves. When it does not, the system has few alternatives.

3.2 Access Access refers to whether people can obtain the food that exists, economically, physically, and socially. In Mbera, it means whether families have enough purchasing power, whether markets are reachable, and whether refugees have

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alternative route and no meaningful buffer stock.

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera

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Source: UNHCR/Viola E. Bruttomesso

the right to buy, sell, and participate in the food economy.

A biometric targeting system managed by WFP and Mauritanian authorities determines who receives transfers and at what level. The informal market inside the camp is the primary daily food access point. It functions, but it depends on supply chains from Bassikounou, which are vulnerable to road conditions, border closures, and price fluctuations. When the border with Mali closed in November 2025, prices inside the camp rose sharply. Access broke down not because the market disappeared, but because purchasing power was insufficient.

3.3 Utilization Utilization refers to what happens after food is received or purchased. It is the space between having ingredients and being able to turn them into nourishing, safe, and culturally meaningful meals. It includes cooking infrastructure, fuel, work surfaces, storage, preservation, dietary diversity, and the knowledge needed to prepare food over time. This is where the gap in Mbera becomes clearest. The only existing intervention in this pillar is a partial LPG cylinder refilling pilot run by WFP and IOM. This gives some households access to cleaner cooking fuel. It matters, but it does not address the broader conditions of food preparation, processing, preservation, or collective cooking. Women are responsible for most household cooking. Many cook over open fires or small LPG burners in individual tents.

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Access is largely mediated by WFP cash transfers. The system works when the transfer is adequate and the market is functioning. Both conditions have become less reliable.

When families arrived in 2012, they were placed in individual shelter units. The shared courtyard, the collective fire, and the rotation of food labor across related households were not reproduced. Food assistance was distributed at the household scale. Cooking increasingly happened at the scale of the individual shelter. The collective was replaced by the private. This has consequences beyond convenience. Women who arrived knowing how to make kilishi, ferment milk, dry foods, process grain, and cook collectively still carry that knowledge. But knowledge becomes fragile when there is no space to practice it. What cannot be practiced regularly becomes harder to transmit. This is especially important now because many of the youngest women in Mbera arrived as children. Some grew up in the camp. They are now adults raising their own children. Many may never have experienced the du as a daily spatial and social structure. They cook alone, in a tent, over a single burner, producing enough for one meal at a time. Utilization is therefore not only a nutritional pillar. It is where cultural continuity becomes materially possible or impossible. Displacement interrupts more than access to food. It interrupts the spaces through which food knowledge is practiced, adapted, and passed on.

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These spaces often lack work surfaces, ventilation, storage, refrigeration, and room for collective preparation. Food grown in the garden or bought at the market must often be cooked and consumed quickly. There is little infrastructure for drying, fermenting, cooling, or processing food at scale.

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3.4 Stability

WFP operates a food security monitoring and early warning system in Mbera, tracking household consumption, market prices, and indicators of food stress. This system provides data. It can show when the situation is worsening. But monitoring is not the same as resilience. There is no clear buffer stock protocol. Most food supply originates from Nouakchott and arrives via a supply chain that passes through Bassikounou before reaching the camp. If that route is disrupted, the camp has no meaningful reserve. The November 2025 Mali border closure showed a different but related vulnerability: supply chains that depend on crossborder trade were disrupted, prices inside the camp rose sharply, and there was no fallback mechanism. Cash assistance has also been significantly reduced. WFP describes its work in Mauritania as a combination of crisis assistance and a gradual transition toward self-reliance. But the transition appears to be happening faster than the infrastructure of self-reliance is being built. The food system in Mbera exists between several realities at once: the food traditions people brought from Mali, the arid ecology of southeastern Mauritania, the instability of regional markets and borders, and the humanitarian distribution systems that continue to structure daily life, even as they shrink. One stabilizing factor exists outside the formal humanitarian system: livestock. Some people living around or near the

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Stability refers to consistent access to food over time, across shocks and seasons. A food system that works in normal conditions but collapses when a road floods or a border closes is not stable.

camp arrived with animals. This agropastoral presence represents a food resource and an economic asset.

Most interventions cluster in the availability and access pillars, concentrated in the emergency column. A few more recent programs extend into stabilization. But the further right you move on the time axis, toward autonomy and post-aid, and the further down on the scale axis, from regional to individual, the emptier the matrix becomes. The humanitarian system has built a functional emergency food response. It has not built the conditions for food autonomy over time.

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3.5 What the matrix shows

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01. Availability Is there enough food?

03. Utilization Do they know how to use / cook the UNHCR distributed food?

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02. Access Can people get the food?

04. Stability Is it consistent over time?

The matrix reveals a food system that works at the emergency level but remains structurally incomplete. Most existing interventions address the immediate question of whether food arrives. Very few address what happens after it does. The proposals that follow come from two parallel processes: research into what other refugee camps and comparable contexts have tried, and original design work grounded in the specific conditions of Mbera. They are mapped across the matrix in orange. They are not confirmed programs. They are possible directions, organized by pillar and scale. One proposal is developed in depth in section 5. The others are presented as complementary interventions that could begin to address the structural gaps the matrix reveals.

4.1 Availability The most significant vulnerability in Mbera’s food system is its dependence on one supply route. The availability proposals respond to this vulnerability by producing more food inside the camp, diversifying what can be grown, and building local knowledge that reduces dependence on external procurement. A greenhouse at the camp perimeter could extend the growing season beyond the single pre-lean harvest that household gardens currently produce. Using simple drip irrigation connected to existing solar borehole infrastructure, year-round cultivation of vegetables, herbs, and highvalue crops may become more feasible. WFP’s H2Grow hydroponics program in Tindouf, Algeria offers one precedent from a comparable desert refugee camp context. In Tindouf,

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4. Proposed Intervention

Permaculture plots could complement greenhouse production by building soil health over time and diversifying what the camp’s sandy ground can support. In arid contexts, permaculture prioritizes water retention, shade, and companion planting. These techniques may improve productivity without requiring large amounts of imported inputs. Permaculture interventions in camps such as Kakuma, Kenya and Azraq, Jordan suggest that this approach can be adapted to desert conditions with limited water resources. A camp-based seed bank could reduce dependence on external seed procurement. Women in the camp may already carry knowledge of traditional seed varieties from Mali, including varieties adapted to Sahelian conditions, drought, and local food cultures. Vandana Shiva’s seed sovereignty framework argues that communities that save and exchange their own seeds maintain control over their food future in ways that dependence on external procurement cannot provide. A seed saving and exchange program, organized through the communal food space workshops proposed in section 5, could make that knowledge more durable and productive.

4.2 Access The informal market inside the camp is one of the most important food access infrastructures that already exists in Mbera. It is refugee-managed, legally recognized, and already functioning. The most effective access intervention may be to support and formalize what already exists, rather than create something entirely new.

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the program focused on barley fodder for livestock and reportedly increased milk production significantly. In Mbera, the focus could shift toward vegetables and herbs for direct consumption.

A mobile market connecting the camp to the Bassikounou Tuesday market could extend purchasing power without requiring individual travel. A scheduled vehicle service would allow women to send goods for sale and receive purchases without making the 17 km journey themselves. Decree 2022-063 provides an important legal foundation. Refugees in Mauritania have the same labor and business rights as Mauritanian nationals. The legal barrier to economic activity is lower than in many other refugee contexts. What is missing is the productive and financial infrastructure to take advantage of that right. Microfinance mechanisms, already used in comparable refugee contexts such as Kakuma and Zaatari, could provide small loans for women to establish food businesses, consistent with the rights already guaranteed under the decree.

4.3 Utilization Utilization proposals operate at four scales: At the household scale, the intervention is knowledge and simple infrastructure. Teaching women to build a zeer pot, a simple evaporative cooler made from two clay pots, sand, and water, could extend the shelf life of vegetables without electricity. Teaching women to build a simple elevated drying rack from local materials could create a surface for kilishi, dried vegetables, and spices. These are existing practices and low-tech tools, given a spatial form that the camp currently does not support. Workshops run through the

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Expanded market infrastructure could improve conditions for the traders who currently operate informally. A designated, shaded, and better organized market space could reduce spoilage through better storage conditions and make the market more accessible to women who travel with children.

communal food space could allow this knowledge to move from the neighborhood scale back to the household.

At the camp scale, the longer-term vision is a network of food spaces, one per school, each anchored to an existing service cluster of school, market, and health facility. The point is not immediate replication. The first step is to build one, learn from it, and then decide what should be repeated. At the regional scale, a food processing and cold storage facility between Mbera and Bassikounou could serve both the camp and the host community. The focus would be on processing foods already available in the region, including kilishi, fermented dairy, and dried vegetables, into shelf-stable products that can be sold at the Tuesday market and beyond. This is less about producing new food than adding value to what already exists.

4.4 Stability Stability proposals address the camp’s most immediate vulnerability: the absence of any buffer when external conditions change. Distributed cool storage across a network of neighborhood kitchens could create a small but meaningful reserve. Each solar-powered cold room, holding 50 to 100 kilograms of preserved food, would contribute to a camp-wide buffer that does not depend on a single point of failure. If the road is cut for a week, families with access to neighborhood storage

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At the neighborhood scale, the proposal is a communal food space serving 10 to 20 families, adjacent to a school, where women can cook, process, preserve, and share food together. This is the proposal developed in depth in section 5.

Diversified supply routes, alternative procurement channels, and regional agropastoral integration are logistics and policy interventions that go beyond the scope of spatial design alone. They still belong in the matrix because the single-road vulnerability is one of the most severe structural risks in the food system. Supporting pastoralists through designated grazing corridors, market access, or coordination mechanisms that connect them to the camp food economy could strengthen a supply route that already exists informally and reduce dependence on the road from Bassikounou. Agropastoral integration could connect the camp food system to the livestock economy that already exists in the surrounding region. Milk and meat are both food resources and economic assets. A coordination mechanism that links pastoral households to communal food spaces as suppliers of milk and meat for preservation, fermentation, and kilishi production could strengthen both the camp food system and the broader regional economy.

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would be less exposed than families with nothing.

For this chapter, one proposal is developed in depth. It addresses several pillars at once, has a realistic growth path, and is grounded in the food practices documented in section 2. It responds most directly to the utilization gap the matrix reveals.

5.1 The argument The matrix shows that utilization is structurally absent. Section 2 shows what that means: the collective food practices women brought from Mali, including making kilishi, fermenting milk, and cooking together around a shared fire, have no spatial home in the camp. The knowledge survived displacement. The conditions to practice it did not. A 2026 FAO report on women in agrifood systems in SubSaharan Africa, The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, identifies women’s collective action as one of the most important levers for food security transformation. The report also finds that cash transfers alone rarely shift conditions unless paired with complementary infrastructure: safe spaces, skills development, and collective livelihoods. The communal food space proposed here is one form of that complementary infrastructure. Women in Mbera already organize collectively through savings groups, garden cooperatives, and community networks. The social infrastructure of collective action exists. What does not yet exist is a physical space for that collective action around food.

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5. Communal Food Space

5.2 What it is A shared food space serving 10 to 20 families. It is not a formal facility with a fixed program. It is a covered workspace with the basic infrastructure women need to cook, process, preserve, and gather. The space includes a low earthen counter designed for seated cooking. This posture is common in the region and allows women to manage heavy pots and long processes while remaining close to children on the ground. The counter has induction cooktops connected to the camp solar grid, integrated sinks, and a clear work surface for processing, grinding, sorting, and preparation. LPG serves as backup for long high-heat processes such as kilishi finishing and soumbala production. A woven reed canopy on rough wooden poles provides shade over the counter and seating area. Outside the canopy, in full sun, a flat elevated mesh drying rack provides surface for kilishi, dried vegetables, and spices. Sun exposure is the technology. Passive cool storage is built into one end of the counter: a thick-walled earthen structure with a small ventilation gap and a wooden door. It is not refrigeration. The thermal mass of the earthen walls could still keep the interior cooler than the outside temperature and extend the shelf life of vegetables and fermented products by several days.

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The du, the Malian domestic compound described in section 2, organized food production, processing, and care collectively. The camp replaced it with individual tents and individual distributions. This proposal does not introduce an entirely new model. It attempts to repair a spatial condition that displacement interrupted.

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A bench and table provide space for sitting, eating, and gathering. A play area with a woven mat keeps children within sight of the cooking area. A dedicated storage area holds shared utensils, pots, and equipment. Women do not have to choose between cooking and watching their children.

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Figure 1. Proposed Design for Communal Food Space

The space is not a program. What happens in it would be determined by the women who use it. Based on the food practices documented in section 2, several uses are likely. Women could come with ingredients bought at the camp market and pool household resources to purchase what no individual family could afford alone: meat for kilishi, spices for soumbala, or fresh vegetables in larger quantities. Collective purchasing power changes what is possible. Kilishi could be made here. The full process includes slicing, first drying, pounding, marinating, second drying, and finishing over heat. It takes time and requires surface, sun, shade, and heat. It is difficult to do properly in a tent. Fermentation could happen in the cool storage: nono from milk sourced from pastoral households in the surrounding region, soumbala from locust beans boiled in large pots, and grain products that benefit from controlled temperature and time. Older women could cook near younger ones. Knowledge could move through proximity and shared practice, the same way it moved in the du. Anna Puigjaner’s Kitchen Recipes frames the kitchen as a site of assembly, where collective intelligence forms through daily practice rather than formal programs. The grinding stone is present. The rhythm is the lesson. New arrivals with no stove, no utensils, and no materials would have somewhere to go immediately. No registration required. The space would be open. Events could happen here: weddings, naming ceremonies, Eid. These occasions already require large-scale cooking and currently have limited infrastructure to support them.

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5.3 What could happen here

5.4 Spatial principles Adjacent to a school, within a neighborhood cluster. The first kitchen should be sited near existing services: a school, a market, and a health facility. Women already move through these spaces every day. The kitchen becomes the missing piece in a cluster that is already functioning. This follows the logic of the Manzanas del Cuidado in Bogotá, Colombia, where care infrastructure is deliberately clustered so that childcare, health services, food, and productive activity can happen near one another. Placing the kitchen where care work already happens responds directly to the time burden women carry. Low, not tall. The counter is designed for seated cooking, the posture in which food has typically been prepared in this context. This gives women better control over heavy pots and sustained physical processes. No gate, no enclosure. The space has no formal entry point. It reads as neighborhood rather than institution. People move through it as they would any shared outdoor space. Built and repaired by the community. Earthen brick, wooden poles, and woven reed are materials available in the region. Part of Phase 1 would involve teaching women how to build and repair the space themselves. When something breaks, they can fix it. When the camp eventually relocates, the structure may stay behind, but the knowledge moves.

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Elders would have a place to sit and be present. Girls could have another reason to stay near school after hours. Over time, the space could also become a starting point for small food businesses, producing kilishi or fermented products for sale at the Tuesday market, consistent with the rights guaranteed under Decree 2022-063.

Built incrementally. The first version is minimal: shade, counter, drying rack, cool storage. It grows only based on what women say they need. Each addition is a community decision.

Figure 2. Map of M’Bera Camp

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Governance established before construction. The physical space and its rules of use are designed together. A community workshop establishes who uses the space, when, how costs are shared, how conflicts are resolved, and who maintains it. Ownership belongs to the women who use it, not to the organization that built it.

Phase 1 NGO-led and subsidized. Humanitarian support builds the space, provides the cooktops, subsidizes gas, and facilitates the initial community governance workshop. Women come, cook, learn, and share. No economic transaction is required to participate. No registration. No formal program to enroll in. The space exists and is open. This phase is already meaningful on its own. A shared kitchen where women cook together, where kilishi can be made at scale, where older women cook near younger ones, and where food for events can be prepared is already an intervention worth making. Phase 2 Community-led. Phase 2 is triggered by the community, not by a donor timeline. If the women who use the space decide they want to do more, such as selling surplus at the Tuesday market, producing kilishi for Bassikounou, or offering warm meals to the neighborhood, the infrastructure can scale. The NGO exits and leaves behind a solar cold room. Women pool resources, cover gas costs collectively, buy ingredients in bulk when prices are low, and process surplus for sale. The closest precedent is Soufra, a Palestinian refugee women’s catering cooperative in the Bourj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut that began with a shared kitchen and a micro-loan and became the first refugee food truck in Lebanon. What the space becomes in Phase 2 remains open. The community decides.

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Figure 3. Proposed Phase 3 Design for Regional Processing Facility

Contingency If Phase 2 never happens, Phase 1 can still matter. A shared kitchen that supports daily food life and transmits knowledge is already a success. It does not need to become an enterprise to have been worth building.

5.6 Feasibility Cost A single Phase 1 unit, including an earthen counter, wooden structure, woven reed canopy, induction cooktops, drying rack, clay vessels, and basic utensils, is estimated to cost between $1,200 and $2,000. These estimates should be verified with organizations working directly in Mbera, including ACF and UNHCR’s camp management team. Phase 2 adds the solar cold room, bringing the total per unit to an estimated $2,000 to $3,500. A pilot of one unit is the initial ask. If it works, replication across all eight schools could bring the total Phase 1 cost to approximately $12,000 to $20,000. These are planning estimates, not final costs. Annual maintenance In Phase 1, the main ongoing cost is gas, estimated at $400 to $600 per year per unit. Structural maintenance, including reed canopy replacement and earthen repairs, may cost an additional $50 to $150 per year. Equipment wear and

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Phase 3 Regional scale. If the group decides to grow further, a regional processing facility between Mbera and Bassikounou could serve both the camp and the host community. The focus would be on processing what already exists in surplus, including kilishi, fermented dairy, and dried vegetables, into shelf-stable products for regional sale. At that point, this is no longer a humanitarian intervention. It is a development investment that would need to emerge from the productive capacity built in Phases 1 and 2.

Governance Women in Mbera already organize collectively through savings groups, garden cooperatives, and community networks. Before the space opens, a community workshop establishes the rules: scheduling, cost-sharing, conflict resolution, and maintenance responsibilities. A coordinator, either paid or selected by the community, manages day-today operations in the first year. In Phase 2, a small elected committee takes over, following the logic of tontines and West African shea butter cooperatives: rotating leadership, collective decision-making, and transparent accounting. Materials. The space is built with materials that are locally available. No specialized external supply chain is required for the basic structure. When something breaks, it is repairable with materials at hand. Portability The camp may eventually relocate. The earthen counter will not travel. But the knowledge of how to build it, how to govern it, and how to use it will. Women who spend years in this space carry that capacity wherever they go. The investment in Phase 1 is an investment in people, not only in a building.

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replacement could add another $100 to $200. Total annual maintenance per unit in Phase 1 is estimated at $600 to $900, likely absorbed by the NGO program budget. In Phase 2, gas costs could be covered by the community from collective revenue, and structural and equipment maintenance may drop to $150 to $300 per year.

5.7 Open Questions

Community buy-in The most important unknown is whether the women of Mbera want this. The proposal is grounded in documented food practices and a clear spatial gap. But a design that women do not use is not a good design. Before any construction begins, the proposal needs to be tested with the community. Not presented to them, but developed with them. What do they need? What would make them come? What governance structure do they trust? What does collective food practice look like after more than a decade in the camp, especially when many women may never have known the du as a daily spatial and social structure? Where should the first one be? Who should be the first users? These are questions only fieldwork can answer. The proposal presented here is a starting point for that conversation, not a finished answer. Funding fragility The Phase 1 assumption, that a humanitarian agency subsidizes gas and operations, is fragile. Food assistance in Mbera has already been reduced, and the broader humanitarian funding environment is contracting. A proposal that depends on the subsidy in its first phase needs to be honest about the risk that the subsidy may not arrive, or may disappear before the community is ready to sustain the space independently. The contingency addresses this partially: Phase 1 is already meaningful, even if Phase 2 never happens. But the

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This chapter proposes a communal food space grounded in existing practices, mapped against a documented gap, and designed with a realistic growth path. But it is a proposal developed without fieldwork in Mbera. Several questions remain open, and it is important to name them.

Land and water One reviewer at the mid-review raised the question directly: is there enough water and land in Hodh el Chargui to support food production at the scale Mbera represents? The camp is effectively a large urban settlement. Its ecological footprint, including groundwater extraction and land use, is substantial. The borehole infrastructure appears sufficient to support the water needs of the communal food space itself, including cooking, cleaning, and fermentation. The cooking space is not highly water-intensive. But the broader question of whether food self-sufficiency is ecologically viable at full camp scale remains open. It requires hydrological and land use assessment that this chapter cannot provide. The host community The proposal briefly addresses the host community through the Phase 3 vision of a regional processing facility serving both Mbera and Bassikounou. But the relationship between camp food infrastructure and the host community food economy deserves more attention. Does expanding food production inside the camp compete with local farmers and traders in Bassikounou? Does it complement them? Does the Tuesday market relationship create economic integration or economic tension? These questions are not answered here. Relocation The camp may eventually relocate, consolidate, or be decommissioned. Any fixed infrastructure investment carries the risk of being left behind. The design response to this risk

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contingency still assumes Phase 1 funding exists. If it does not, the proposal does not happen. This is not a reason not to propose it. It is a reason to pursue multiple funding pathways at once, including UNHCR, ACF, bilateral donors, and development actors.

Scale Starting with one unit is the right scale. The governance questions, maintenance questions, and community buy-in questions cannot be answered without a pilot. Replicating across eight schools before learning from one would be a mistake. The proposal is modest by design. It asks for a pilot, not a program. If the pilot works, the replication case becomes stronger. If it does not work as designed, one unit is a manageable failure from which to learn.

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is built into the proposal: earthen construction that is locally buildable and replicable, governance that can travel, and knowledge that stays with people. Still, the risk is real and should not be minimized. An investment in people is more durable than an investment in a building.

Resources Caselle, C., Bonetto, S. M. R., De Luca, D. A., Lasagna, M., Perotti, L., Bucci, A., & Bechis, S. (2020). An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Sustainable Management of Territorial Resources in Hodh el Chargui, Mauritania. Sustainability, 12(12), 5114. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12125114

Friedel, M. J., Finn, C. A., & Horton, J. D. (2015). Hydrogeologic map of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (phase V, deliverable 56), Synthesis of hydrologic data (phase V, deliverable 57), and chemical hydrologic map of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (added value). In Open-File Report (Nos. 2013-1280–C). U.S. Geological Survey. https://doi.org/10.3133/ ofr20131280C Global—Subnational Administrative Boundaries | Humanitarian Dataset | HDX. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://data.humdata.org/dataset/ cod-ab-global In Mauritania, Mourchidates take the lead in preventing violent extremism in local communities | PEACEBUILDING. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/content/mauritania-mourchidates-takelead-preventing-violent-extremism-local-communities International Organization for Migration. (2026, January). DTM West and Central Africa — Regional report on the transhumance tracking tool (January 2026). IOM Kéré Architecture. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://www. kerearchitecture.com/work/building/gando-primary-school-3 Marugán, J., Pablos, C., Le Goueff, L., Sidi, M. M., & Mohamed, F. O. (2025). SAHARAPONICS project: Local production of food of high nutritional quality and minimal water consumption in refugee camps in arid areas. Societal Impacts, 5, 100110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socimp.2025.100110 No Stop City. (n.d.). Architectuul. Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https:// architectuul.com/architecture/no-stop-city OpenTopography—NASADEM Global Digital Elevation Model. (2000). Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://portal.opentopography.org/ raster?opentopoID=OTSDEM.032021.4326.2 Stenning, D. J. (1994). Savannah Nomads: A Study of the Wodaabe Pastoral Fulani of Western Bornu Province Northern Region, Nigeria. LIT Verlag Münster. UNHCR Mauritania Operation Factsheet (September 2024). (n.d.). UNHCR

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Centre, U. W. H. (2009). Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/750/

Operational Data Portal (ODP). Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://data. unhcr.org/en/documents/details/111102

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World Bank Mobilizes US$248 Million to Support 2 Million Pastoralists in the Sahel. (2015). [Text/HTML]. World Bank. Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2015/05/26/world-bankmobilizes-us248-million-to-support-2-million-pastoralists-in-the-sahel World Bank Supports Mauritania’s Reforms to Drive Inclusive and Sustainable Growth. (2025). [Text/HTML]. World Bank. Retrieved May 24, 2026, from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2025/11/26/ world-bank-supports-mauritania-reforms-to-drive-inclusive-and-sustainablegrowth

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Laiqa Gitosuputro

This project challenges the humanitarian view of the tent as merely an emergency shelter by drawing on the rich tradition of nomadic architecture, where the tent is a culturally significant home, constructed and maintained by women. In M’bera Camp, where most residents live in UNHCR tents under conditions of prolonged displacement, there is a critical gap between institutional emergency standards and the need for dignified, adaptable living spaces. The proposal bridges this gap by introducing a modular, community-built shading frame system. This “blank canvas” structure provides essential relief from extreme heat while enabling residents— especially women—to adapt, maintain, and personalize the space using local materials and traditional textile practices. By prioritizing community agency, cultural expression, and women’s roles in construction, the system transforms standardized shelter into a platform for safety, social life, and long-term resilience.

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“The essence of nomadic architecture lies in the process of creation, not the end product. Inherent in this process is the interference between transport technology and building technology, and the continuity in the process which involves labor, that is, the skills involved in its creation and perpetuation...” (Prussin) First, we begin with the concept of the tent as a home. In traditional African nomadic cultures, the home is inherently temporal as is necessary when livelihood depends on pastoralism and the movement of animal herds and people. The home - the tent - must be quickly assembled, disassembled, and easily transported from place to place. This is a custom practiced and refined for centuries resulting in a vast collection of knowledge across different nomadic cultures. Several types, techniques, and materiality emerged depending on the season, occasion, and culture. This is generations of knowledge of construction, material, and

Three Structural Armature Tent Systems. Source: Gordon Clarke

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The Traditional Nomadic Mobile Architecture

167 Tuareg Leather Tents. Source: Labelle Prussin

‘Benye’ Moorish Tensile Tensile Tent of Imported Cloth, Mauritania. Source: Sébastien Boulay

Materiality is a clear indication of culture. Depending on the season and precipitation, different material is used for the tent such as animal skins, woven wool, or camel hair which has water resistant qualities. Palm-fiber mats are also common but most notably, there is a prominent usage of weaved, sewn, and dyed textiles especially to decorate the interior of a tent. Typically, panels are made from handwoven cotton and wool strips that are then sewn together. There is a strong culture of weaving, such as Malian Fulani weavers, in nomadic peoples that remain present despite forced displacement to refugee camps. With modern technology and practices, manufactured and industrial cotton is also used.

‘Benye’ Moorish Armature Tent with Decorated Interior. Source: Sébastien Boulay

Industrial Cotton and Old Veils of Different Colors for Interior Layer. Source: Sébastien Boulay

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Materiality as Culture

169 Tent Panel Fourteen cotton and wool strips sewn together, Fulani weaver, Mali Source: The George Washington University Museum

Bed Screen (Arkilla Munga) Ten handwoven strips of dyed sheep wool and locally spun cotton, Songhai artist, Mali Source: The British Museum

Bed Tent (Kereka) Six long woven strip of heavy wool sewn together, Fulani weaver, Mali Source: Saint Louis Art Museum

“Because women were, and continue to be, the architects of the indigenous built environment in nomadic societies, consideration of the changing role and position of women in such societies is of paramount importance in understanding the relationship between vernacular and institutional tent architecture.” (Prussin) The tent in African nomadic culture is primarily associated with their women and they are, quite literally, the homemakers. Not only are they caretakers of the family, they construct, maintain, and take down their tents when relocating. The tents belong to them as the house and its furnishings are passed down from mother to daughter. They serve as a way to secure a woman’s right to inherit a portion of the family property while they continue to hold psychological significance as a space and domain that belongs to her. Materiality and textiles also come into play as “the majority (of the tents) are more elaborate, sometimes decorated so that the shelter better preserves the dignity and honor of the woman who lives there.” (Boulay) Women are an incredibly significant, if not the most important, factor into the home and what exactly makes the tent a home to be passed down through generations.

Share of household heads who are women, 2024. Source: UNHCR-WFP

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Women as Homemakers

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This can still be seen even within refugee households as of 2024 as four out of ten (4/10) households are still headed by women in Mauritania.

Group of Women Constructing Armature Tent. Source: Sébastien Boulay

Health Awareness Campaign. Source: SOS Nomad Association

Tent as Shelter On the other end of the spectrum is viewing the tent, not as a home, but as merely a shelter. 64% of all Malian refugees living in Mauritania live in tents which are described as “precarious housing conditions” according to the UNHCR and WFP Socio-Economic Profile Data. The UNHCR Family Tent has been widely distributed within Mbera camp and is made from a polyester-cotton blend and a standard plastic groundsheet with a lifespan of only 1-2 years in terms of it’s water resistant and fire retardant qualities. Like most of UNHCR’s tents, it is deigned an emergency shelter. There is a very clear assumed notion that rigidity means durability, and tensility means emergency. While not entirely incorrect, it allows for the erasure that the tent does not necessarily have to be subjected to solely an emergency label, as seen in nomadic cultures. Despite both being a tensile architecture, here is a very clear divide between the African nomadic tent and the institutional emergency shelter. Between mobility and sedentarization, living and survival, tradition and institution. Many of the camp’s refugees have lived in Mbera for many years and, due to the continuing political instability, will likely live there for many more, yet they still have to live under a constant state of

Shelter Design Catalogue. Source: UNHCR

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The Institutional Architecture for Survival

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“emergency”. Due to political and social reasons, it is difficult to even build durable, rigid structures as they may appear permanent.

Socio-Economic Profile Data. Source: UNHCR and WFP

Mbera Camp. Source: Reuters

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HOME

Berber Tent, Morocco (2011). Source: Gordon Clarke

nomadism tensility living traditional

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SHELTER

Mbera Camp (2012). Source: Reuters

sedentarization rigidity survival institutional

Tent as Community “It is expected that in warm climates and based on cultural habits, certain activities will happen outside (e.g. cooking), hence kitchen space is not factored into above standard. Shaded external space adjacent to the shelter can be established, if possible, for these activities.” (UNHCR Emergency Shelter Solutions & Standards) The UNHCR, of course, has a standard for their emergency shelters and while it is acknowledged that shaded external space can be established for outside activities, a standard doesn’t exist for it. This project explores how to bridge the gap between home and shelter by providing a standard to turn the institutional tent into both community-led adaptation and cultural expression through a shaded, modular frame system. This is a literal frame that acts a formalized “blank canvas” in which the community can utilize and tailor how they see fit.

Mbera Camp. Source: Al-Jazeera

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A Participatory Framework for Adapting the Tent

177 Source: SOS Nomad Association

“From now on, our space has a gym dedicated to young girls. This room offers them a safe, covered and suitable place, allowing them to practice physical exercises in peace, without embarrassment or inappropriate looks. Apart from the slots reserved for young girls, the room can also be made available to young boys for the practice of physical activities, according to a defined schedule.”

In Mbera Camp, where temperatures can reach 50°C (122°F), access to shade is essential for supporting daily life and protecting residents from extreme heat. Standardized shading would enable safer and more comfortable spaces for education, markets, recreation, and community gathering while addressing the needs of women and children, who comprise 83% of the camp’s population and face heightened risks of gender-based violence. With only 30% of young children attending primary school and girls making up just three in ten students, these shaded spaces could also support learning and community programs. Beyond climate protection, they provide opportunities for cultural preservation and strengthen the social fabric of the camp. Organizations such as SOS Nomad Association and Femmes Ressources are already creating safe spaces for women and children, providing a foundation that additional community infrastructure can build upon.

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Primary Goals

1. Develop a shading system that is simple to construct, maintain, and replicate using locally available materials and skills 2. Create intentional, safe, and adaptable spaces for women, children, and community activities while allowing for informality, growth, and changing needs over time 3. Accommodate a variety of shading materials, including reused tent fabric, traditional textiles, or other locally sourced alternatives, supporting both sustainability and cultural expression

HOW IS IT BUILT?

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FRAME

A simple, modular frame that can be easily assembled, maintained, and replicated using locally available materials and/or manufactured wood sticks provided by UNHCR or other organization. The open structure serves as the foundation for a variety of woven or suspended shading materials. The interchangeable system encourages repair, replacement, and cultural expression.

Adjustable textile panels can be raised, lowered, or secured to provide varying levels of shade, enclosure, and privacy. This flexibility allows users to adapt the space to different activities, weather conditions, and community needs while giving occupants agency over their environment.

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OPERABILITY

MATERIAL

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Reused Tent Material

Traditional Textiles

Solar Panels

CONNECTION

String can be made from cutting thin strips from old plastic tent material.

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SECTIONS

The frame can be used as the wall or the roof and can be free-standing or attached to an existing structure, such as a classroom or school.

184 Multiple potential iterations either freestanding or attached to an existing structure.

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Drawing from the construction model of the Mbera sandbag classrooms, the shading system can be built through a cash-for-work program that pairs skilled builders with unskilled laborers, making construction accessible while creating local employment opportunities. Prioritizing the participation of women in both the construction of the frame and the fabrication of the woven skin supports economic empowerment and recognizes their central role within the camp. By involving residents directly in the building process, the system can create a sense of ownership and agency, ensuring the structures can be maintained, adapted, and expanded by the community over time.

Health Awareness Campaign. Source: SOS Nomad Association

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WHO BUILDS IT?

PHASE 1: 1. Begin with a limited amount of frames with joined governance between UNHCR and organized women leadership in the camp 2. The structure is taught to and built by female community members 3. They use the space for: - weaving and crafting - socializing and support circles - sharing of cultural knowledge/techniques - produce for the frame, personal use, or to sell * locations can be dependent on proximity to schools and/or other established structures and programs * services for both care-givers and care-receivers are brought together

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HOW IS IT USED?

PHASE 2: 1. Structures become more “permanent” and established in their respective areas 2. Program and services grow into a functioning collective - skills training (weaving, building, selling, finances, business) - tools and supplies (looms, sewing machines, materials) 3. Participants can get paid to teach others - economical social gatherings - continuous culture and skill transmission - opportunities for wages outside of selling *at this point, the distinct design of the frame can denote community/safe spaces for women and children throughout the camp

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HOW IS IT USED?

PHASE 3: 1. Individual women/households own their own frame, maximizing agency and adaptable functionality 2. Frames are also used for other community purposes - fashioned with PV panels for solar energy - attached with drip irrigation systems for hydroponic farms - community kitchens - latrines - schools

More than protection from the sun, shade creates the conditions for community life to flourish. By providing a simple, adaptable, and culturally responsive system, this proposal transforms shade and that which provides shade into essential social infrastructure that supports safety, learning, gathering, and resilience within Mbera Camp, especially for women and children.

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HOW IS IT USED?

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Course Instructor Malkit Shoshan Teaching Assistant Spurty Kamath Cayden Abu-Arja Students Adin Becker, Joseph Fujinami, Laiqa Gitosuputro, Ralph Lin, Cecilia Portillo Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture Sarah Whiting Chair Rachel Weber Acknowledgments We are also grateful to the external contributors who participated in lectures, workshops, and reviews, and generously shared data with us: UNPBF: Diane Myriam A Sheinberg UN Habitat: Mathias Spaliviero; UNHCR: Rakesh Gupta Nuchanametla Ramasubbaiah, Abdulaye Sy, Vasiliki Tsioutsiou; and UNICEF: Nathalie Daries and Karin Heissler StoryMap This course review is supported by Story Map Site: https://storymaps.arcgis.com stories/4c90e837ddd6404cb4de2f908ec8add5 Previous Report For background and related research, see the previous complementary report (Spring 2025): Spatial Design Strategies for Climate Migration: https://issuu.com/gsdharvard/ docs/spatial_design_strategies_for_climate_ migration

Copyright © 2026 President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Text and images © 2026 by their authors. The editors have attempted to acknowledge all sources of images used and apologize for any errors or omissions.

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Seminar Report Spring 2026

Harvard GSD Department of Urban Planning and Design

Students Cayden Abu-Arja (TA), Adin Becker, Joseph Fujinami, Laiqa Gitosuputro, Spurty Kamath (TA), Ralph Lin, Cecilia Portillo