“Our lands and bodies of water have been destroyed.” Take a look at the amount of cassava we’ve recently harvested. It’s quite small. We are going hungry as a result of food shortages. All of this is attributed to the project,” Madam P. (not her real name) from Cameroon burst into tears during a weeklong African Development Bank (AfDB) Campaign Strategy meeting in Guinea Conakry.
WoMin, South Africa, and its partners, Lumière Synergie pour le Développement (LSD), Senegal, and the Comité pour l’Abolition des Déttes Illegitimes (CADTM) Afrique, organised the meeting.
Madam P. was upset about the AfDB-financed construction of the Nachtigal hydro dam.
The Nachtigal hydropower plant is a 420MW run-of-river hydropower project in Nachtigal, Cameroon, on the Sanaga River. Nachtigal Hydro Power Company (NHPC) is developing the hydropower facility, which is owned by Électricité de France (EDF, 40%), the International Finance Corporation (IFC, 30%), and the Republic of Cameroon (30%).
The plant’s construction began in 2018, and it will begin operations in 2023. The Nachtigal hydropower project is located on the Sanaga River near Nachtigal Falls, approximately 65 kilometres from Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital.
The project area is located in a transition zone between forest and savannah in the Guinea-Congolese rainforest. Approximately 310 hectares of forest were cleared during the dam’s infrastructure construction, which included the hydroelectric power station, the water retention area, and the electricity transmission line.
The communities rely on the forest to collect non-timber forest products that are used in traditional medicines and other rites.
The river was also used for fishing, and the land was used for sand excavation, restoration, and agriculture by the people of Sanaga.
Ghana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal are among the countries with similar stories about AfDB and other IFC-funded projects.
Unfulfilled promises to employ local youth, inadequate or no compensation for loss of livelihood, destruction of the ecosystem, and compensation for the socio-cultural impact are just a few of the many setbacks of such IFC-funded projects.
As a result, the projects are dubbed “the necessary evil.” ‘Necessary’ because they support the government’s development agenda, such as electricity, roads, and railways, but ‘Evil’ because they are associated with poverty in affected communities.
“Our youth can no longer stay with us because there are no jobs. Madam P. lamented, “They have left the community in search of greener pastures.”
Participants at the AfDB Campaign Strategy meeting came from eleven (11) different countries in West, Central, and Southern Africa, including Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea Conakry, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Mauritania, and South Africa.
It brought together women who had been impacted by IFC projects, primarily AfDB. The women are seeking restitution and compensation for the social, economic, and environmental harm done to them and their communities.
Presentation by women affected by AfDB financed projects during the one-week meeting at Guinea, Conakry.
For these reasons, WoMin and its partners, LSD and CADTM Afrique, began working to hold the AfDB and other IFCs accountable to local communities, particularly women, who are disproportionately affected.
WoMin believes that the actions of governments and IFCs such as the AfDB undercut global efforts to achieve sustainability through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The strategy meeting in Conakry was thus an important, influential, and radical space aimed at giving a voice to communities affected by the AfDB project, deepening community knowledge and defence against the AfDB, and allowing participants to collectively build strategies to hold the AfDB accountable and demand reparations.
Samantha Hargreaves, Director of the Womin African Alliance (South Africa), urged affected women and project communities, in general, to be tenacious, stand up for their rights, and refuse to be intimidated by such educated and influential people at the AfDB and in government into accepting meagre or no compensation in exchange for their livelihoods.
She led them in chanting, ‘No means No!’ as a sign of empowerment.
There were approximately sixty (60) participants in attendance, including forty (40) members of communities and defence organisations and twenty (20) participants from partner and allied organisations as well as stakeholders.
By: Sangmorkie Tetteh/ www.zamireports.com