The north African country's biggest building materials manufacturer Lafarge Ciments says demand for

The north African country's biggest building materials manufacturer, Lafarge Ciments, says demand for its cement is likely to grow this year thanks to the social housing projects. SOCIAL STABILITY The scheme was launched after 14 young men from the slums set off bombs in the centre of Casablanca in May 2003, killing 45 people including themselves. It was a shock for a country proud of its social stability and showed the growing influence of radical Islamic preachers in neighbourhoods abandoned by the state. Most of the bombers were from Sidi Moumen, home to thousands of breeze-block shacks with metal roofs held down by rocks. Barefoot children hop between stagnant puddles in narrow alleyways, past sheep and cows picking over piles of rubbish. Young men feed and clothe their families by shining shoes or selling offal, fruit and herbs from carts and recycling scrap metal.

Winter floods send rats scurrying through living rooms and in summer the sun beats down on the corrugated iron roofs, turning homes into ovens. Several unofficial mosques opened in Sidi Moumen in the 1990s, some with radical imams who organised vigilante squads to patrol the slums and punish crime and immoral behaviour. The mosques were closed or demolished after the 2003 attacks, when the state tightened control over religious preaching. More radicalised youths from Sidi Moumen blew themselves up in 2007, killing a police officer, and for many Moroccans Sidi Moumen is still a byword for extremism.

"When a bus passes by with Sidi Moumen marked as its destination, passers-by sometimes shout 'Boom!'", said former resident Saida Fikri. Young men from the slums say the police still avoid their neighbourhoods and basic services are still lacking. GUARDED OPTIMISM Whereas promises to rehouse the slum dwellers were once dismissed as a bad joke, today there is guarded optimism. Fikri teamed up with another slum dweller to buy two floors of an apartment block on an estate on the edge of Casablanca. They paid 70,000 dirhams ($8,000) of which the state gave back 30,000.