Conceived as early as 2024 during a meeting between senior leaders of the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d'Ivoire (CSRS) and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), the “YopouLab” initiative has been taking shape since 2025, evolving into a transdisciplinary action-research platform for urban public health based in Yopougon. Known as the Yopougon Urban Lab, or “YopouLab,” this initiative is built on close collaboration between the CSRS, Swiss TPH, and the Yopougon Millionnaire-Extension Mixed Health Center, bringing together researchers, public policymakers, and community leaders to address the public health challenges facing rapidly expanding African cities such as Abidjan.

Following an initial survey conducted between April and May 2026 among 1,495 households in various types of housing in Yopougon, the initiative entered a decisive phase of structuring and ensuring its long-term sustainability. In this context, the YopouLab consortium organized a two-day workshop focused on two strategic objectives. The workshop consisted of two key and complementary components.

1. Monday, September 14 (Norbert BEHI Room, CSRS) – Internal Strategic Alignment

The first day brought together the CSRS Executive Committee and the scientific teams from CSRS and Swiss TPH that have been involved in YopouLab since its launch. Based on the survey results, this first day provided an opportunity to discuss the added value of YopouLab as a tool for collecting and analyzing high-resolution data, as well as to outline various scenarios for a future Health, Demographic, and Environmental Surveillance System (HDESS) based in Yopougon. These discussions helped clarify, within the team, the extent to which YopouLab could address both scientific and “practical” challenges (that is, the concrete needs of stakeholders in the field). These clarifications were essential for better guiding the discussions on the second day of the workshop with non-academic stakeholders.

  2.    Wednesday, September 16 (Wedding Hall, Yopougon City Hall) – Local Roots and Institutional Commitment

The second day of the event was held at Yopougon City Hall, attended by the CSRS Executive Board, researchers from the CSRS and Swiss TPH, and representatives from the Autonomous District of Abidjan, the Ministries of Health, Environment, Women and Children, the Order of Architects of Côte d’Ivoire, as well as various officials from the Yopougon City Hall. The main objective was to determine, using the April–May 2026 survey as an example, whether the tools and approach proposed by YopouLab generated practical interest among the aforementioned stakeholders, particularly for the design and evaluation of public policies. As such, this session was designed to be highly interactive. The approach based on urban form—using health and well-being indicators categorized by neighborhood type (“precarious,” “evolving,” and “formal/planned”)—sparked significant interest among participants due to its ability to identify health priorities specific to each neighborhood or type of urban settlement.

These two days of workshops thus marked a critical milestone in the dissemination of YopouLab, laying a solid foundation for future transdisciplinary exchanges. Indeed, by bridging the gap between scientific data and public action (a research-action approach), YopouLab aims to provide sustainable guidance for public health and urban planning policies.

Follow this link to listen to the report by Radio Yopougon : https://www.csrs.ch/fr/videos  

NGS/Equipe projet YopouLab/CelCom