The Navarra Center for International Development researcher Ángela Abascal gave an interview on Radio Africanía in which she spoke about the importance of characterising poverty from the point of view of urban planning in order to understand the context of poverty in which many people in Africa live and thus be able to develop more effective public policies. 

Abascal explained that the IDEAMAPS project, of which he is a member, calls for not only taking into account the socio-economic characteristics of African suburbs, as has been done up to now, but also the context: "We must take into account the quality of the housing, but also what happens in the space, that is, if there is a hospital nearby, a road.... All of this also influences poverty," she said. 

The NCID researcher focuses her research on slums with rubbish in urban settlements in Nairobi, such as Kibera, for example: "Thanks to mapping, we know that the places where there are more rubbish dumps are also where there is more poverty", explained Abascal. 

In addition to using satellite images to understand the context of the most impoverished areas of Nairobi, Ángela Abascal is also committed to citizen participation to find out what is happening in these areas: "With our new PARTIMAP project, we are trying to find out what the people who live in these suburbs of Nairobi think in order to find out which neighbourhoods are most in need and influence those in power to focus public policies there", she pointed out.