From Living Homes to a National Strategy
Across the vast stretches of the Algerian Sahara, we are not lacking land, sunlight, or ancestral knowledge. What we lack is a bold and rooted vision—one that reconciles humans with the land, the climate, and their future.
This manifesto calls for a profound shift in how we relate to the desert. It argues that rural housing in the Sahara should no longer be seen as a burden, but as an opportunity—a strategic lever for food, water, and ecological sovereignty in Algeria.
- A New Way of Living: Breaking Free from Inadequate Urban Norms
Saharan urban planning today is shaped by imported and standardized models: concrete housing blocks, artificial cooling, centralized networks, and disconnected parcels. These approaches ignore local climates and lifestyles.
But in arid regions, a home is more than a shelter—it is an ecosystem. A rural house in the Sahara should include a garden, a few animals, fruit trees, composting, and perhaps even a small workshop. It must be productive, resilient, and self-sufficient.
It is time to move beyond the logic of “full connection” to centralized infrastructure. A well-designed home can harvest rainwater, treat its own wastewater, generate renewable energy, and grow food. This is not nostalgia—it is a forward leap into resilience.
Key Proposal: Establish a Saharan Habitat Code that recognizes the home as a self-sustaining, climate-adapted, food-and-water-producing living unit.
- Water, Energy, Soil: Transforming Homes into Micro-Oases
Each rural home has the potential to become a regenerative micro-oasis. The technologies and solutions already exist:
- Water: rainwater harvesting, greywater treatment via plants, infiltration basins
- Energy: solar and wind power, off-grid autonomy
- Waste: composting, recycling, local reuse
- Food: gardens, orchards, small-scale livestock
- Architecture: use of local materials, passive cooling, landscape harmony
This model—both modern and ancestral—is not only ecologically rational; it is economically smart. It reduces infrastructure costs, strengthens local food security, and increases resilience to climate disruptions.
Key Proposal: Build a national ecosystem for sustainable Saharan housing, bringing together architects, builders, ecologists, and rural youth.
- Water: The Seed of Regeneration
Water in the Sahara is not absent—it is simply mismanaged. Today, it is lost to runoff, evaporation, or drainage. We must reverse this logic: slow it down, spread it out, let it sink in.
Techniques to adopt include:
- Rehydration: swales, contour ditches, shelterbelts, recharge ponds
- Ecological sanitation: reed beds, planted filtration systems
- Hydrological urban planning: designing towns and housing to follow natural water flows
These are low-tech, high-impact strategies—rooted in both common sense and traditional knowledge.
Key Proposal: Make regenerative hydrology a core component of all Saharan housing and urban development projects.
- From Bureaucracy to a Fertile State
Appropriate and frugal innovations exist, but they are held back by rigid regulations, outdated procurement rules, and siloed institutions. Algeria must shift from a State of control to a State of facilitation.
We must allow innovation, support ecological construction in public tenders, open space for cross-disciplinary collaboration, and systematically document and replicate local successes.
Key Proposal: Reform building codes and standards to support sustainable techniques and open up public procurement to green innovation.
- The Sahara: A Cradle of Regeneration
Far from being a barren void, the Sahara is a cradle of regeneration. It holds ancestral knowledge of water management, an energetic youth ready to engage, and the world’s most abundant solar energy potential.
With the right mindset, this territory can become a living laboratory for ecological transition and a symbol of how humanity can thrive within planetary limits.
Key Proposal: Launch Saharan Regeneration Schools—hands-on, community-based programs where young people learn by regenerating their land and building the future.
- A National Strategy for Regenerative Development
To move from scattered experiments to systemic change, Algeria needs a comprehensive national strategy for regenerating Saharan territories. Such a strategy must include:
- A supportive legal and institutional framework
- Capacity-building for local actors
- Cross-ministerial coordination (housing, energy, agriculture, water, youth)
- The integration of scientific and indigenous knowledge
- Long-term funding for scalable, replicable projects
Key Proposal: Launch a National Strategy for the Regeneration of Saharan Territories, designed and implemented with the communities at its heart.
Conclusion: Now is the Time to Shift
This manifesto is a call for constructive defiance. We cannot wait for top-down solutions. The future must be built from below—by cultivating water, restoring land, training youth, and constructing homes that regenerate rather than consume.
The Algerian Sahara can become a cradle of regeneration. All it takes is a new vision—one that embraces sovereignty, resilience, and the deep meaning of the word “inhabit.”
To inhabit, here, is to regenerate.
Teaser image credit: Taghit, an oasis village in Algeria, North AfricaBy CIA World Factbook – https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ag.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27907360