“My main role is to align the planets so that things happen”
“An architect by training and an urban planner by deformation”, he says from the outset, as urban planning studies do not exist in Switzerland. Jérôme Chenal has several strings to his bow. With his own agency, this expert in urban management and planning, a specialist in African cities, has managed, from a very young age, to turn his passions into a career that inevitably oscillates between research and operational work. “I am keen to keep one foot in research and another in operations; it is, in my view, the only way to remain vigilant, to understand things while taking a step back”, he explains. This hybrid vision is essential in his view to avoid automatic reflexes in operational projects, or the disconnection from realities on the ground that can be observed in urban research…
In his role as director of the Excellence in Africa research centre, he manages research programmes and develops the network of partnerships between EPFL and UM6P across the African continent. “My main role is to align the planets so that things happen”, he sums up figuratively. Jérôme Chenal is also President of the African Cities Lab initiative. For him, in addition to thematic priorities such as mobility, health and waste management, the development of African cities depends first and foremost on the creation of dedicated ecosystems. “There is no point in creating digital applications if, at the same time, we do not train the coders to make them, the engineers to implement them and the start-ups to market them. Ordering an application from a large foreign company means recreating dependency”, he stresses. According to Jérôme Chenal, the key lies in funding African universities, which will in turn be able to train the local talent needed for a lasting transformation.
A career marked by adventure and concrete impact
When he thinks back to the highlights of his career, he recalls this anecdote: “A Swiss diplomat had told a minister of an African country about our African Cities Lab project and a few days later, I found myself at 9 a.m. in the office of an African president presenting our digital projects for urban solutions”. And among the achievements of which he is particularly proud, Jérôme Chenal remembers his first major project in Mauritania: “I found myself alone, a young urban planner, on a project where I drew up the subdivision plan for 10,000 families over 150 hectares, as part of the restructuring of the El Mina district. Today, you can walk around the district just as I had imagined it”.
For this passionate urban planner, sources of inspiration lie well beyond the pages of a book or the scenes of a film: “It is the cities themselves that inspire me. All it takes is 24 hours in the streets of New York for me to want to draw, write and develop new ideas”, he says of this city that particularly fascinates him.
Finally, for Jérôme Chenal, maintaining a balance between professional and personal life, when his passions for Africa and for cities are also his work, makes mixing the two inevitable, “but that is also what makes our lives so rich”, he concludes.
If you were…
– A colour, which one would you be, and why? The ochres of the earth
– A country, which one would you be? Switzerland, definitely.
– An African city? The ones I don’t know yet, and there are still many of them
– A personality…? Joker
– An animal…? The giraffe, for its elegance
– A connected object? My phone, even if it takes up far too much space
– A superpower? Invisibility
– A book…? Traps (La Panne) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt