Photographer Franky Verdickt

Franky Verdickt, born in 1971 in Brussels. He is member of Photolimits, a platform for documentary photography.In the 70s the Egypt government launched the the master plan to put an end to the encroachment of agricultural land. For thousands of years it was forbidden to built in the desert, for the desert remains the realm of the dead. Beside mythological reasons it was a well impossible to live in such an hostile environment. In less than 15 years, the urbanized area of Cairo has almost tripled in size. In less than a decade, a new urban world has been created at Cairo’s gates.The desert fringes, the immanent property of the state, were sold without restraint or any overall plan to private developers. And this transfer continues to this day, involving increasingly gigantic private projects.
In 1991, immediately after the first Gulf War, Egypt signed a program of reform and economic liberalisation with the IMF and the World Bank. The agreement was aimed at reducing public spending, facilitating privatizations. After this agreement, the state could no longer give priority to public housing programs. In any event, the initial program of new towns intended for the working class had entirely failed to achieve its aims. The new towns remind ghost towns.
This serie of photographs is a public housing project, called ‘Built your house’. The government gave a part of the desert were the less wealthy Egyptian can built their house. To do so they need about 15000 to 25000EGP. The key phrase in building these settlements is cutting costs. Cheap materials and child labor as a result. If the finish the house within 15 month the builders receive from the government a grant of 1500EGP (+-200€).
The workers live with no running water nor electricity in on of the most hostile places on the planet. Weekly on thursday the workers go back home to their villages for the friday prayer and return on saturday morning.
The project lies a couple of kilometres from the road to 6th of October City. It seems like some project-manages will built a more prestigious gated community to hide the proletarian city. It is doomed to become a ghost city.

                                         >>>Franky Verdickt