From the top of a ladder, a Senegalese girl struggles to catch a glimpse of the beach hidden by a swanky hotel’s sprawling ocean frontage — a stunt for a music video that highlights growing grassroots efforts to save Dakar’s coast from hungry developers.
The video shows the threat that unregulated construction poses to the Senegalese capital’s eroding shoreline, which provides a cherished escape for residents of the crowded and often polluted city.
“Where will our children play tomorrow?” raps activist hip-hop artist Malal Talla, also known as Fou Malade, as drone footage shows the concrete husks of half-built buildings and an industrial site on the West African shore.
Photo: Reuters
The Dakar region’s population is growing at twice the rate of the rest of Senegal and has reached 3 million.
Scientists and residents have sounded the alarm over the destruction of ocean-side plantations of filao — whistling pine trees — whose salt-tolerant, far-reaching roots stabilize the dunes and slow coastal erosion.
Dakar lost nearly 9m of coast per year in its worst-affected areas between 2006 and 2015, far above the national average of 1m to 2m, said Amadou Tahirou Diaw, a former geography professor at Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop university.
Michel Mendy, who coordinates the activist group behind the video, said he understands that the capital needs to grow, “but it does not mean they have to go to the forest nearby, cut it and replace it with concrete,” he said, standing on the beach in Dakar’s Guediawaye district, where a new highway has split its strip of aging filaos.
The group’s protest adds to a chorus of public anger fueled by a construction project on one of Dakar’s most popular open beaches.
Diaw said he was heartened that the fight to protect the coast had gained fresh momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Maybe after COVID-19 something will change,” he wrote in e-mailed comments.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS