New look for Naledi: upgrading a squatter settlement

Photographed on location in Botswana, this film examines the upgrading of Naledi, a squatters’ settlement on the outskirts of Gabarone. Originally a collection of tin shacks and dilapidated lean-tos, Naledi was gradually improved through local government and CIDA-sponsored self-help programs whereby residents were given repayable loans in the form of building materials. While to foreign eyes the settlement may suggest more despair than progress, Naledi now has clean water, sanitation, roads, drainage and street lighting, and is considered a model of African settlement upgrading.