Fight to save Senegalese capital’s coast gains momentum

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 grass roots 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.

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, farreaching roots stabilise the dunes and slow coastal erosion.

Dakar lost nearly 9 metres of coast per year in its worst-affected areas between 2006 and 2015, far above the national average of 1-2 metres, said Amadou Tahirou Diaw, a former geography professor at Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop university.

Michel Mendy, who co-ordinates the activist group behind the video, said he understood the capital needed to grow.

“But it doesn’t mean they have to go to the forest nearby, cut it and replace it with concrete,” he said. —