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.

Inland via the massive Mbeubeus dump

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Early start to beat the traffic out of Dakar; headed straight for the Mbeubeus (“m-boob-us”) dump/landfill, we decided to skip Saint Louis and head for Touba direct therefrom…

Mbeubeus was all that I had heard—a smoking hell hole, with those making a hellish existence from its dregs. The fellow working his smouldering hole to screen out the metal was a disturbing image, then again maybe it’s just a black-and-white version of Voltaire’s garden. Maybe that’s why they have resisted the government’s attempts to relocate their livelihood. But the reasons why it just can’t work are growing all around the dump. We cruised the area a little and I saw gardeners carrying their metal watering cans up from the groundwater springs to water beautifully green gardens. Maybe the gardens will need to be closed instead of the dump?

I still have quite a few questions about the dump that will require follow up. I didn’t get any means to conduct even an eyeball survey of what was coming in and where it came from. The only trucks I saw on the road in or out were a couple very, very full top load trucks, a hundred or more cubic yards each. I had understood that Canadian or some other researchers were at the landfill but we didn’t try any advance contact and couldn’t find visual directions once there.

The road to Touba was nice. I loved the rural sights, such as the thatched compounds. But there is garbage dumping in large areas blighting that view. Goats can always been seen grazing on a field of garbage. It occurred to me at a point: what would happen if they didn’t have the garbage? Would their livelihood be threatened just like the Mbeubeus scavengers? Almost half of the goats, sheep, and other livestock in Senegal already starve to death.

Theis and Diourbel were nice towns. Diourbel is pretty sleepy; evidently being overshadowed by Mbacke and Touba. Actually Touba is apparently drawing the attention and activity from Mbacke, too… We got to Mbacke about 12:30—it really didn’t take long from Dakar; the road is good. I settled in to a great hotel here with stucco bungalows that look like the circular thatched homes of the rural dwellers. The personnel here are very nice and real. Then we hung out with Mamemor’s extended family. His mom and aunt made lunch. I bought a Baye Fall bou-bou that his nephew made. I met others while we drank lots of café Touba, the strong, sweet dark roast coffee, spiced with diar (“jar”). Before that, while napping at Mamemor’s mom’s place, I caught the Pope’s arrival in the U.S. on CNN; I tried to ignore the silly tired comments that American Catholics are “diverse.” If they were so diverse they wouldn’t be Catholics; nobody is forcing them…

Mustafa and Mamemor’s nephew Mustafa drove me around Mbacke looking at all the garbage around the town… Then back to the hotel. Mamemor brought a fantastic salad, chicken and rice dinner made by his folks before bed. Tomorrow we go into Touba and hopefully meet the Halif (religious leader of the Mourides)…

The cost of Senegal's garbage

I saw firsthand today how the garbage problem is undermining Senegal’s economic prosperity. Piles of garbage have been thrown over the ridge above the Technopol development area, which is also a very beautiful wetland preserve of hundreds of acres, also the site of the new but sorely undeveloped Dakar golf course…

I left the President Meridian this morning after a brief but fascinating talk with Heinz about nuclear power—just recently pushed by both America’s and Senegal’s presidents—as a solution to global warming, with the probably insurmountable concerns which would have to be addressed by global cooperation: safe operation, political questions of stability and terrorism threat, fuel for arms, nuclear waste management, etc… I left the President to begin our travels through the Senegalese hinterlands—to Touba and land beyond uncharted. I will miss the cosmopolitan excitement there. But before heading out tomorrow, we saw the city water treatment facility near the Technopol site, surrounded by lush plant nurseries. Then we drove above the palm trees and wetlands to see children playing in garbage covering, almost entirely, the ridges around the site. We saw further health concerns at the nearby street food market where reeking garbage piles sit uncollected next to the food vendors. Tomorrow we will stop at the country’s one landfill which, as I understand, is surrounded by choleric vegetable gardens… M. Libasse dreams of cleaning up the hillside around Technopol and using the treated water to finish the golf grass. Something has to start somewhere…