Dame Touré rushed to quick­ly gath­er what she could as bull­doz­ers rolled in­to her neigh­bor­hood in Ivory Coast’s fast-grow­ing eco­nom­ic hub of Abid­jan. Her three chil­dren joined her, stuff­ing plas­tic bags with clothes and what­ev­er oth­er items they could grab, be­fore their home was re­duced to rub­ble as armed se­cu­ri­ty forces looked on.

The Touré home was among hun­dreds crushed in a Feb­ru­ary wave of de­mo­li­tions tar­get­ing Abid­jan’s un­der­de­vel­oped ar­eas.

The gov­ern­ment says it’s be­cause of pub­lic health con­cerns as the poor ar­eas — built along a la­goon in this port city of 6.3 mil­lion on West Africa’s south­ern coast — suf­fer dead­ly floods dur­ing the rainy sea­son. More than 300 peo­ple have been killed since 2005 and of­fi­cials say the del­uges be­come breed­ing grounds for wa­ter-borne and oth­er dis­eases.

“My chil­dren and I now sleep un­der the sun,” said Touré, 50. “We don’t know where to go.”

De­mo­li­tions in low-in­come neigh­bor­hoods are noth­ing new in Abid­jan, where rapid ur­ban­iza­tion has led to a pop­u­la­tion boom and hous­ing short­ages, with near­ly one in five Ivo­rians re­sid­ing in the city. It’s a chal­lenge in many parts of Africa where eco­nom­ic woes pushed more peo­ple in­to cities in search of bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties, strain­ing an al­ready over­stretched in­fra­struc­ture.

How­ev­er, the lat­est Abid­jan de­mo­li­tion — main­ly in im­pov­er­ished sub­urbs in the Gesco and Se­broko dis­tricts — is one of the largest in years, with an es­ti­mat­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of res­i­dents af­fect­ed since it be­gan in late Jan­u­ary. Evict­ed fam­i­lies and rights groups say that this time, it’s be­ing done with­out pri­or no­tice or com­pen­sa­tion.

An­a­lysts say many African gov­ern­ments strug­gle to man­age pop­u­la­tion ex­plo­sions in cities and meet grow­ing in­fra­struc­ture needs. Chimezie Ana­ja­ma, a pol­i­cy re­searcher and founder of Bloom­ing So­cial Pen de­vel­op­ment non­prof­it, says few ad­min­is­tra­tions have man­aged to solve the de­vel­op­men­tal prob­lem.

“There must be a strong com­mit­ment by dif­fer­ent African gov­ern­ments to come up with cre­ative so­lu­tions to ad­dress the in­fra­struc­ture gaps in African cities,” Ana­ja­ma said.

Lo­cal au­thor­i­ties have de­fend­ed the de­mo­li­tions, and say re­lo­ca­tions of fam­i­lies left home­less to safer ar­eas has start­ed.

Some 35% of Ivo­rians are poor. Wa­ter short­ages are a dai­ly curse, with many forced to fetch wa­ter from streams for their dai­ly needs. The coun­try has al­so had to con­tend with oth­er chal­lenges, such as ji­ha­di at­tacks that have spread to coastal states in West Africa, in­clud­ing Ivory Coast.

“The aim is to pro­vide a de­cent … liv­ing en­vi­ron­ment for these peo­ple,” the Ivory Coast’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions min­is­ter, Amadou Coulibaly, has said of the de­mo­li­tion cam­paigns. He claimed in Feb­ru­ary that some of those evict­ed in neigh­bor­hoods like Borib­ana are be­ing re­set­tled in at least 1,000 hous­es built by the gov­ern­ment.

Many fam­i­lies, how­ev­er, re­main home­less, strand­ed in sev­er­al parts of the city.

The de­mo­li­tions are be­ing car­ried out in “a bru­tal man­ner … caus­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences for many fam­i­lies al­ready vul­ner­a­ble,” the Ivo­rian League for Hu­man Rights said in a state­ment. It urged au­thor­i­ties to halt the cam­paign.

Among those af­fect­ed by the de­mo­li­tions were near­ly 2,000 school­child­ren of Cha Hélène Col­lege in the Yopougon neigh­bor­hood, which was re­duced to rub­ble in Feb­ru­ary.

The school was not in­formed it would be de­mol­ished — nei­ther by the Ivory Coast’s min­istry of con­struc­tion nor the na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion min­istry, said Sévérin Okpo Abe, the school’s founder. The chil­dren were even­tu­al­ly en­rolled in oth­er near­by schools.

Most of the evict­ed res­i­dents who are not sleep­ing out in the open have ei­ther re­lo­cat­ed to oth­er parts of Ivory Coast or are squat­ting with res­i­dents else­where.

“We have been made home­less in our own coun­try,” said Aimée Oué­drao­go, a spokesper­son for women af­fect­ed by the forced evic­tions.

The evic­tions broke up fam­i­lies and the home­less were scat­tered across the city, she added. “We no longer have a home, we no longer have our fam­i­ly, we no longer have our chil­dren next to us.”

Amid the out­rage and protest from the evict­ed, Ivory Coast Pres­i­dent Alas­sane Ouat­tara has asked Abid­jan’s lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to “show sol­i­dar­i­ty … to pre­serve co­he­sion and so­cial peace.”

How­ev­er, city’s of­fi­cials say the de­mo­li­tions are part of a broad­er project to re­con­struct and pro­vide ba­sic ameni­ties in the ar­eas. Plots of land would be leased to those evict­ed for up to 25 years, for about $16 a month, they say.

On April 8, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced it’s start­ed to com­pen­sate af­fect­ed house­holds and that each would get about $405 to sup­port the re­lo­ca­tion. In a coun­try where the min­i­mum wage is about $121 a month, some be­lieve it’s not enough to af­ford the grow­ing cost of hous­ing.

“All dis­placed peo­ple will re­ceive the nec­es­sary sup­port for their re­lo­ca­tion,” said Bel­monde Do­go, the min­is­ter in charge of ef­forts to al­le­vi­ate pover­ty.

The Yopougon mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, most­ly of work­ing-class res­i­dents, al­so an­nounced plans to help those af­fect­ed.

But many like Touré say they were over­whelmed by help­less­ness watch­ing bull­doz­ers ram­page through their neigh­bor­hoods.

“I don’t have any­one in Abid­jan and I don’t have mon­ey to buy a house,” said the moth­er of three, not know­ing how she would go on. “I can’t do it.”