One year after Cyclone Chido struck Mayotte on December 14, 2024, scars remain visible in the Kawéni slum. The association Actes et Cités helps residents reinforce their precarious shelters rather than demolish them. Reconstruction progresses slowly amid massive damage.
Cyclone Chido struck northern Mayotte on December 14, 2024, with winds over 200 km/h and torrential rains. The official toll includes at least 40 deaths and 41 missing, thousands homeless, and hundreds of millions in damages. In Kawéni, the large slum near Mamoudzou, bangas – these tin shacks – were hastily rebuilt by residents for shelter.
In the steep Mahabourini neighborhood, 26-year-old Zarianty Mifthou lives with her mother and six children in a fragile structure. On December 3, she shows Rémi Noulin, an architect from Actes et Cités, a split wooden chevron supporting perforated tin sheets. Dismantled by the cyclone, the banga leaks at the slightest rain. Noulin measures for repairs: replace and reinforce wooden parts, adjust the tins. “I’d like to put in bricks,” confides Zarianty Mifthou, but she adds: “I don’t have the means.”
Active in Kawéni since 2017, Actes et Cités improves informal housing by mobilizing local resources and residents, avoiding demolitions. Elsewhere in Mamoudzou, damage lingers: rusting pontoons symbolize a stalled tourism sector, shipwrecks await removal – work started December 8. Official buildings like the prefecture or Mamoudzou judicial court remain damaged, with overcrowded offices. Colorful tin roofs of bangas dominate the landscape, a sign of vital resilience but a reconstruction that proceeds “at a measured pace.”
