It consists mostly of rows of monotonous matchbox houses, with stunted patches of grass barely covering the red earth and piles of garbage rotting on vacant lots.

The area is mostly composed of old "matchbox" houses, or four-room houses built by the government, that were built to provide cheap accommodation for black workers during apartheid.

Day after day Eric Atkinson had squatted up on that slope watching the smallholding below him, virtually an aerial view, the cottage a matchbox house, the two people dots which he scarcely recognised.

The tiny town had matchbox houses and buildings painted to resemble brick and stone.

In two drawings, palm trees wave over matchbox houses that seem to float on water.

The matchbox houses on Pedreira's block look more or less the same.

The area is huge and is mostly composed of old "matchbox" houses that were built to provide cheap accommodation for black workers during apartheid.

The monthly bill for a state-owned matchbox house here with a broken toilet and faulty wiring can run between $80 and $200, in a community where more than a third of the people are unemployed.

At the end of another of Kinshasa's potholed roads, lined with shacks and crumbling matchbox houses, comes a sudden clearing.

As many as 250,000 people are squeezed into the slum's six square miles on the outskirts of Nairobi, living on top of each other in makeshift matchbox houses of mud, wood and tin.