Slow start for SenIran

The Wall Street Journal today says the joint Senegal-Iran auto venture, SenIran, has fallen far short of it production goals. Last year Dakar decreed the phase out the 25,000-or-so colorful taxi/buses that have been one of Dakar's best known international symbols. They were to be replaced by the shiny new cabs produced by the joint Iranian factory. In today's front-page Journal article, plans to have 2,000 of the SenIran cabs resulted in only 500 on the street... And the $75 millon Theis SenIran factory that opened last year has only produced 20 of the 10,000 cars it had planned to produce this year... Parts, labor and construction delays (the usual) caused the problems according to the Journal's report, which states that sources acknowledge the venture, one of others around the world, has other goals besides profit... The article also mentions that it was Iranians who ran the power lines to Touba recently, including probably those who I met during my Spring, 2008 visit to the Holy City.

Dakar port gets new cranes

The remodeling of the Dakar port is moving forward. In late August, the installation of several new cranes was finalized. They include two Panamax gantry cranes and Reggian cranes. Two gates to the port were finished also. The improvements come as Dubai World assumed operations of the port in May 2008. Further improvements are planned for the rail and road corridor to Mali.

Dakar port improvements touted

Progress on improvements to the Port of Dakar is being made according to its Director General, Bara Sady. Security in particular has improved, he says. Navigation has improved at the entrance, exit and through a functional lighting system. Procedures for access to the port are better controlled. Tariffs and connections with the inland hinterland have been improved, he says. Dakar is a favored port for Mali and other inland areas. The Autonomous Port of Dakar has been modernizing since early 2006 and intends to become "a first-class hub of the maritime routes," according to Mr. Sady.

Garbage strike hits Dakar

Garbage workers--les ramasseurs d'ordure--in Dakar are on strike, and according to one news source, facing arrests. The workers, employed by the community association of CADAKAR and the French multinational firm Viola, want more pay and better health conditions. Apparently tuberculosis is widespread among the workers and the vaccinations that they receive have not been effective... We noted last year that the demise of the large-scale AMA waste management contract may have been doomed by labor unrest. Since the Italian AMA left town, the French Viola has moved in, at least to the central parts of Dakar. Now apparently it is also running into trouble... Do the garbage workers have a valid grievance? We're told that pay runs only around a couple (U.S.) dollars a day. Of course,the work is hard around the world, good pay or bad... Our sources also tell us that the Dakar labor force is subject to manipulation by political power brokers. The current strike is organized by Le Front unitaire des syndicats du nettoiement. They promise that garbage will pile in the streets if their demands are not met. They want to meet with President Wade to voice their complaints... Senegal's garbage problems have many causes...

Senegal congress environmental department budget misses chance to pick up the garbage

Senegal's government cut the budget slightly this year to the Environment Ministry, but not before representatives deplored the state of garbage in the country. The $67.7 million (U.S.) environmental budget approved is down several million from the last adopted budget. Deputies in the National Assembly voiced their concerns that the garbage ringing Senegal's cities is creating a health hazard. The town of Kaolack, in the heart of the country's groundnut crop region voiced special concerns. The government responded that APIX, the foreign investment agency, and the city of Dakar are working on addressing the growing garbage problem as well as the closure of Mbeubeubus, the nation's sole actual landfill... Other environmental concerns such as fisheries and wildfires were noted as affected by the lowered environmental budget. But it is the garbage problem which Senegalese are most concerned about, according to the article Le Quotidien.

Dakar's mysterious disappearing waste management

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I came here interested in ventures/collaborations/projects involving solid waste management in Senegal. From my advance research on the subject, a mystery remained about the fate of the AMA project here. The multi-million dollar, 25-year AMA project, the World Bank’s most significant waste management project in Africa, started with competitive bidding four or five years ago. The Italian company AMA won the contract to collect the entire Dakar region, build a transfer station and develop a landfill to replace the out-of-control, polluting Mbeubeus dump. But suddenly after the contract had been implemented for a couple year, the project simply ended. The government stopped payments on its contract, and presumably the bank loan. It was never clear why. Today I spoke with Christian Diou, the World Bank’s infrastructure manager for Dakar. He gave the bank’s understanding of the project breakdown—they don’t know either. Not much more than a year ago, he says, the government simply pulled its payments and terminated the contract. The garbage trucks and facility plans were stopped in their tracks. There was no explanation given by the Ministry of Environment which handled the contract. However, my Senegalese sources, and hints from the internet, indicate that the problem had something to do with labor; that unions formed of the waste workers hired by AMA made unmet demands. Nor should it go unnoticed that once the AMA contract was breached, the French firm, Veolia, moved in to manage the easy collection in downtown Dakar… Perhaps here as in California garbage, like politics, is always local. (Or maybe that French sense of the colonial “droit de seigneur” asserting itself under the table.) Since the AMA meltdown, the central government, says Mr. Diou, has enacted the devolution of waste management authority to the local “commune” governments of Dakar and nearby Rufisque. Those two communes are working together loosely to handle or contract waste collection and management. The result is apparently a patchwork of waste management that the central government has left (perhaps consciously) little understood or known…

Earlier in the day we met with the Ministry of Environment. After first greeting the minister himself, he passed us off to his sub-minister with the garbage portfolio. The one clear message I got from the minister himself was that Mbeubeus must close. Later today I learned from Mr. Diou why the government is so decided to get rid of Mbeubeus—the huge dump is smack in the way of the showcase coastal highway that is the Wade administration’s highest priority public project. The Mbeubeus closure is one waste project that the World Bank and the Senegal government can both get behind, says M. Diou, and the bank will help fund those efforts. But I got the strong impression that further World Bank involvement in waste collection and management here is unlikely—once burned as they were.