Investing in solar energy could bring electricity to millions of Senegalese, significantly reduce electricity bills in the long term, and attract millions of dollars in development funding under the UN-brokered Clean Development Mechanism, says the UN, but only if investors step in.

Spiralling fuel costs, with oil prices at US$90 a barrel increase the urgency to go solar. “If you reduce these [fuel] oil import costs,” said Nick Nuttall, spokesperson for the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi, “it will do a tremendous amount to save money for government investment in schools, hospitals and other development activities to help the poor.”

Just one in four Senegalese has access to mains electricity, according to the UN, and the national electricity company, Senelec, struggles to meet even this demand.

Faced with a five-fold increase in its fuel bill between 2005 and 2008, Louis Seck, head of Senegal’s Renewable Energy Department, said Senegal not only wants to, but must now invest in renewables.

Opportunities

“Research suggests that by tapping into just a small section of the solar energy resources of the Sahara desert, you could theoretically produce enough energy to fuel the entire planet,” said UNEP’s Nuttall.

Senegal, like many of its Sahelian neighbours, gets 3,000 hours of sunshine a year at an intensity of 5.8 Watt hours per square metre (Wh/m2) per day. Solar power stations can be set up on uncultivable land, making Senegal “an ideal location for solar energy development”, said Nuttall.

Giant solar power plants, using mirrors to concentrate sunlight, have been set up in Spain, Portugal, Australia, the USA, and one is currently being built in Western Sahara - Africa’s first large-scale factory.

Benefits

For Nuttall, going solar may be an easier way to provide electricity to rural communities than getting them on the grid, “which can take years”. Just one in six rural Senegalese currently has access to mains electricity.

Abdoulaye Fall, head of environmental quality and safety at the National Confederation of Employers in Senegal (CNES), said solar power could save money in the long term. While it currently costs about US$18.40 to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity using diesel, according to Seck, energy created at giant solar power plants could cost as little as half of this.

Furthermore, investing in solar energy and other renewables like hydro-electric and wind power creates more jobs than investing in oil and gas, according to a UN and International Labour Organization study.

There are environmental and health benefits to solar energy, according to German aid agency GTZ. On top of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions it would make rural Senegalese, almost all of whom use firewood or charcoal for cooking, less dependent on these “dirty fuels” which can lead to respiratory diseases, a cause of infant mortality.

Moreover, the carbon emissions market makes investing in solar power a draw for wider sustainable development projects. Senegal hosted Africa’s first carbon forum in September 2008 hoping to attract investors seeking a higher greenhouse emission allowance than permitted by the Kyoto Protocol to fund renewable energy projects in Senegal as part of the Clean Development Mechanism. At the end of the week-long forum, 25 projects had found funders.

Challenges

It is hard to combine disparate efforts to create economies of scale, lowering costs. At the moment, most of the solar projects under way in Senegal are small-scale and expensive, says Seck.
 
GTZ is working with the Senegalese Agency for Rural Electrification (ASER) to provide villages with photovoltaic panels, aiming to bring electricity to 60 percent of the targeted populations within three years.

Private investors are funding a wind power project in northern Senegal, a biomass project to produce energy from the typha plant, and a programme to create hydro-electric power (HEP) on the River Senegal, according to Senegalese energy official Seck. But only one renewable energy scheme of any size exists in Senegal - an HEP station at the Manantali dam on the River Senegal, which has been supplying power to Senegal, Mali and Mauritania since 2002.

To set up more schemes of this size the government needs more cash. It has not been easy to attract private investors at anywhere near a large enough scale, according to the CNES’s Fall, because Senegal is still seen to be a risky place to invest, and the government provides little to no information for investors on risks and opportunities, he said.

GTZ coordinator Mansour Assani Dahouenon agreed. “The challenges for investors in renewable energies are the lack of a regulatory framework, and of incentives to investors,” he said.

Investing directly in Senelec’s renewable schemes is an “unattractive” prospect, according to Seck, because of its large debt burdens, its poor equipment and outdated infrastructure, and heavy government involvement.

And even if the money is found, it is still difficult and expensive to store and transport solar energy, says Nuttall, and few researchers have yet found effective ways of overcoming this.

Progress

GTZ is stepping in to try to help the government draw up legislation on how to feed electricity from renewable energy projects directly into the national grid.

Legislators from across West Africa came together in Ghana in late September 2008 to urge regional leaders to form a West African Renewable Energy Community to promote renewable energy projects. They also agreed to push leaders across the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to pass stronger laws to protect investors in renewable energy schemes.

Fall suggests in the meantime the Senegalese government should form a public-private partnership agency to regulate the renewable energies market, and should agree to back up big financing projects to reassure investors. Only then, he says, will solar power be affordable on a mass scale.

Nuttall recognised a solar-powered West Africa was still a long way off, but, he said, its renewables’ market can only expand. In 2007, US$150 billion were invested in renewable energy worldwide, a 60 percent increase over the previous year, he told IRIN. “Renewable energy is happening now in West Africa… there are a lot of challenges, but the fact is, that the sector is just taking off.”

IRIN 

For years, farmers in one of Senegal’s most mango-rich zones, Keur Mbir Ndao, 80km east of the capital, were losing more than half their harvests. While some wrote it off to God’s wrath, researchers told them the cause was actually an Asian fruit fly, Bactrocera invadens, first discovered in Kenya in 2003.

According to the Nairobi-based International Centre of Insect Physiology & Ecology (ICIPE), if these flies are not controlled, they can wipe out crops and economies worldwide. Sunday Ekisi, the leader of the centre’s African Fruit Fly Program, told IRIN West Africa’s horticulture is particularly vulnerable: “The fragmented structure of fruit production, poor standards for phytosanitary management [agricultural goods crossing borders], poor management skills and lack of state and donor support makes eradication a difficult, if not impossible task.”

Ekisi said Africa-born flies can travel and endanger horticulture in other continents’ tropical regions.

In 2005, fruit flies ruined up to 40 percent of Africa’s two-million ton mango harvest, said Ekisi. “It is not just lost crops, but also loss of access to lucrative export markets abroad, which brings in much needed foreign exchange,” said Ekisi.

Three years later, Ekisi told IRIN, not much has improved:“The level of rejection [of African horticultural products] that has been witnessed the last two years as a result of Bactrocera invadens is enormous.”

Kenya is not able to export its mangos and avocados to several countries. Less Ugandan bananas are exported than before. Ghana’s citrus and avocados face the same fate. Ekisi estimated producers are losing 30-50 percent of their harvest value because of flies.

To tackle the problem requires a regional approach, but first, countries need to control the problem within their borders, said Ekisi.
Senegal

The president of Keur Mbir Ndao’s Cooperative of Fruit and Vegetable Producers, Ama dou Diakhate, told IRIN Senegalese farmers were close to giving up in 2005: “People did not know how to deal with these flies and were ready to cross their arms in defeat.”

In 2005, Senegalese farmers produced 60,000 metric tons of mangos valued at almost US$10 million, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. But flies helped cut short the planting season by a month, with the last mangos harvested by 15 August.

In a country where more than 25,000 are directly employed by the mango industry, fruit flies threaten not only fruit, but also livelihoods, said the business development advisor for the US-funded Economic Growth Program, Dr. Patrick Nugawela: “The mango industry has a wide spectrum of people depending on it, so mango flies affect everyone across the spectrum, from the producer to the exporter."

Starting in 2007, the program has worked with trade associations like Keur Mbir Ndao’s cooperative to fight back through a nationwide government led-Integrated Project to Control Fruit Flies.

In 2006 and 2007, producers had some relief with fruit fly interventions and the mangos lasted until the end of the rainy season in September. The extra month helped Senegalese farmers earn an extra US$5 million in mango money, according to export receipts.

In 2008, the Keur Mbir Ndao cooperative hired educators to show farmers that unkempt fields and rotting mangoes breed flies. They demonstrated how to attract the flies with things as simple as basil plants, and traps rigged with lady’s face cream or nutmeg- scents that attract the flies. They showed how neem oil, a natural vegetable oil, can control the flies.

Mangoes buffer price increases

Diakhate said the longer 2007 growing season helped some farmers in Keur Mbir Ndao buy an entire year’s worth of rice for their families at the end of the harvest: “If people didn’t have room to store the 50-kilo bags of rice, they would leave it at the store, and come by to pick up their rice supply monthly.”

Reflecting global price increases, the price of rice in Senegal has increased by 74 percent over the past two years, pushing members of some communities in the rice-dependent country into malnutrition, based on a July 2008 Ministry of Health report.

So far in 2008, farmers surveyed by the cooperative in Keur Mbir Ndao report, on average, an almost 70 percent increase in income over last year. Even so, Diakhate said people are not able to buy a year’s worth of rice as before. “We can afford to stock up only a few months. It is just too expensive now.”

And as of 7 October, Diakhate is still counting on producing more mangos. “We expect this harvest to last one more week.”

But he recognises the battle has not been won yet. “Not all mango growers are engaged in the fight. We are still losing about 15 percent of our harvest. We need to stay vigilant. The flies are smart. We have learned just how quickly they reproduce.”

And vigilance takes money, said ICIPE’s Ekisi: “Investment in fruit fly control can be enormous…it has to be a continuous process.”

IRIN 

Thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in two districts of Dakar where houses should never have been built, according to Seydou Sysall, the former Senegalese minister of development and urban planning.

The two districts are Guédiawaye and Pikine, both of which are in coastal wetland zones. Particularly affected is the neighbourhood of Wakhinane Nimzatt, which means “dig and drink” in the local language Wolof.

“Building on wetlands exacerbates the flood situation”, said Sysall. “These wetlands are not viable for construction.”

According to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), 600 families are affected in Guédiawaye.

The government promised to re-house these victims but many said they were still waiting for a new home and had to rent or live with relatives.

“We are still waiting for people to move us and give us a new house. But we know there are limited resources, so for now we are obliged to stay here [in rented accommodation],” Ndeyene Diouf, a resident of Wakhinane Nimzatt, told IRIN.

Wetlands are areas where the water table is at or near the surface of the land, or where the land is covered by shallow water.

Reservoirs

Four reservoirs have been built to drain ground water from Pikine and Guédiawaye. Between them they hold 1.4 million cubic metres of water. Four more are planned for other flood-prone Dakar suburbs, said Mansour Ndoye, an official at the Ministry of Urban Planning.

However, the reservoirs need to be made properly watertight, said Councilor Ngom, a local municipal councilor in Wakhinane Nimzatt. The plan is to equip them with pumps so that water can be pumped out of the reservoirs into the sea if it looks like they might burst their banks, he said.

Delays in finishing the reservoirs have contributed to this year’s Guédiawaye flooding. “Unfortunately the reservoirs are not finished so now, each time it rains, water overflows and floods nearby houses,” said Ngom.

“We are a little behind schedule… The problem is that some people refuse to leave their homes, which delays work on the reservoirs,” Ndoye said.

Ngom confirmed that some people were refusing to leave their homes, using buckets to empty their houses of water.

Flooding is an annual problem in suburban wetlands areas, according to Sysall, but, he said, “the problem is not the rain; the problem is constructing [houses] on wetlands.”

Government ban

The government issued a ban on construction in wetland zones in its 1967 Dakar Urban Plan, which has not been updated or enforced in over 40 years, according to Councilor Ngom.

“The law says [wetlands] should not be built on, but people do it anyway,” Sysall told IRIN.

After particularly heavy rain in 2005 the government launched the five-year Plan Jaxaay, which means “Eagle” committing US$107 million to build housing for families displaced by flooding in wetland areas, and building up the infrastructure and sanitation systems to make the sites less vulnerable to flooding.

Since then, 1,500 families have been moved to districts outside Dakar, according to Ndoye, who is also an assistant coordinator of Plan Jaxaay.

The rural exodus to Dakar has contributed greatly to the flood problem, as newcomers build houses illegally, but the government is planning a tougher stance: “We are reactivating this law and will make sure from now on that people are removed from wetland areas,” he told IRIN.

IRIN 

El Malick Seck, jailed editor-in-chief of 24 Heures Chrono, a privately-owned newspaper, will on October 28, 2008 appear before a court in Dakar to answer defamation charges brought against him by the country’s Minister of Interior, Sheikh Tidiane Sy.
 
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the suit followed an article in  24 Heures Chrono published on July14  that  said although  Sy has denied having links with Diané brothers who were reported to have murdered a  French judge in Djibouti, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s document confirmed that Sy had worked for assassins  in Washington.

Seck is serving a three-year prison sentence for linking President Abdoulaye Wade and his son to a Côte d’Ivoire money laundering case. The 24 Heures Chrono has also been banned for three months for the same offence. The ban expires on December 12.

The Media Foundation for West Africa 

Children should not be seen as victims of sexual exploitation, but rather the front-line fighters against it, said non-profit Save the Children Sweden at a preparatory meeting in Dakar in advance of the World Congress against sexual exploitation of children and adolescents to be held in Rio, Brazil in November 2008.

The summit will be co-organised by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and NGO End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).

Save the Children’s West Africa adviser Elkane Mooh told IRIN it is children who are best placed to help address the situation. “They are the primary actors in this because they know the situation best. Abuse is something which is hidden, but kids can share this information by talking to each other – together they can help find the solutions.”

Up to 22 children from 15 African countries joined human rights groups, child specialists and non-profit organisations to debate how children can take on a bigger role in the fight against exploitation.

“Children need a voice in society,” 14-year-old Tenicia from South Africa told IRIN. “Adults tend to forget about children. Most children don’t know about the dangers of sexual exploitation. They don’t know their rights.”

Although accurate statistics are hard to come by, child rights advocates at the conference say it is possible sexual exploitation of children is on the rise.

Save the Children’s Mooh says the global economic slump is partly to blame. “The food price crisis and the difficult economic conditions we’re going through can mean that parents are more likely to turn a blind eye to these activities. Children have more and more economic responsibility within the family – and this puts pressure on them.”

In Kenya, 80 percent of surveyed child sex-workers said a family member or friend introduced them to sex work according to the International Labour Organization.

Young people at the Dakar meeting discussed different forms of exploitation, from sex tourism and sexual violence at school, to forced and early marriages, and sexual violence during and after conflicts.

Breaking the silence with a text message

One suggestion children put forward is to tap into youth-friendly communication tools. Mamadou, 16, from Senegal said “When a child has gone through this [exploitation] it can be too difficult for them to talk to their family about it – or even to a helpline. So, texting a help service could be a better way of making children talk.”

But opening a dialogue is just part of the equation. “When a child is the victim of sexual exploitation by a tourist, they must first get medical help”, says 17-year-old Chamir from Togo, “but the hospital should give that information to the Ministry of Health and also to the Ministry of Tourism that controls the hotels. It’s important that the different departments communicate with each other.”

UNICEF West Africa adviser Joaquim Theis says the heart of any strategy for change should involve children. “The vast majority of children don’t have a choice in life. They aren’t given information…they are not involved in decisions made about them. We need to move beyond these very limited forms of children’s participation and move towards a freedom of expression, of information and decision making – their basic civil rights.”

Yassin (15) from Gambia is among the youths expected to present at the Rio Congress. “We have to come together. This is really affecting us young children. Sugar-daddies give short term benefits but long-term problems. We can make a difference – the future lies in our hands.”

IRIN 

On 26 September, it will have been six years since 1,865 people died on the Joola ferry, which carried more than three times the number of passengers it was licensed to, when it sank off the coast of Senegal.

No one has been prosecuted in this continent’s largest maritime disaster. On 12 September 2008, French judge Jean-Wilfrid Noel issued nine international arrest warrants against Senegalese officials who were in power at the time of the sinking, holding them responsible, based on maritime agreements between the two countries. Included are Senegal’s former prime minister, minister of transportation, head of armed forces, as well as army and marine officers.

Twenty-two French nationals died in the accident.

On 19 September, ten lawyers for the Senegalese government fought back, announcing plans to counter-prosecute the French government for “abuse of authority and bringing our institutions into disrepute,” said lead lawyer Moussa Felix Sow. At a press conference in Dakar, his colleague El Hadj Diouf accused the French judge of “pure and simple racism, judicial imperialism.”

As the governments trade legal jabs and threats to arrest each other’s former high-ranking officials, families of the victims continue to wait for someone to face charges in court for the accident.

Immediately following the accident, Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade said the state assumed responsibility for the sinking, but that the only person who had to answer to a court of law was the captain of the ferry, Issa Diarra— who had died at sea.

High-ranking army officials were transferred to other positions and reprimanded for not reacting quickly enough to calls for help.

The Senegalese government offered US$21,000 in damages for each victim in the drowning. Upon accepting the money, family members agreed not to pursue a legal case against the government.

Not all the money has been disbursed; families must provide adequate paperwork to prove their ties to the victims, and not all required documents have been submitted, according to government officials.

Families of French nationals who died on the ferry refused the compensation, and instead launched an investigation in France on 1 April 2003 against Senegalese authorities for manslaughter and failure to rescue people in danger.

Reached in Paris, Alain Verschave, the vice president of an association of French victims, told IRIN the arrest warrants vindicate not only the deaths of French citizens, but also of all those who drowned, “Yes, we initiated the legal proceedings, but it was on behalf of all the families.”

Idrissa Diallo, a coordinator of an association in Dakar of victims’ family members, says he welcomes the warrants. “The fact the judge Jean-Wilfrid Noel is bringing to trial these Senegalese authorities comforts us a bit. At least, we have the impression our children, our family did not die in vain.”

He says the state paid him about US$60,000 for his three children who drowned. But for him, this amount does not come close to covering his or other victims’ losses, “I worked in the United States [at the time of the accident] and left everything [six years ago] to follow my children’s case. Among us [in the association], we have lost everything, [our] wives and children.”

Diallo says about 65 percent of the victims in the drowning were younger than 26 years old, based on a survey his association conducted with some of the 64 ferry boat survivors and family members of the deceased.

Diallo told IRIN he thinks Senegalese officials have not finished paying off their moral debt for the ferry accident. “It is a terrible shock to lose at once three of your children. For so many nights, I could not sleep. But I was forced to accept it. You cannot dispute death.”

IRIN 

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today demanded the release of journalist Moussa Kaka who has been jailed for a year over his alleged links with Tuareg rebels in the northern part of the country despite decisions by two judges that the reporter should be released.

“Moussa has paid too much for an offense that there is no evidence he has committed,” said Gabriel Baglo. “His contact with the Tuareg rebels was only in his professional capacity as a journalist and posed no danger to anyone. We demand his unconditional release and all the charges against him to be dropped.” 
Kaka, Niger correspondent of Radio France International (RFI) and director of privately-owned Radio Saraouniya, was arrested on September 20, 2007 and held on charges of endangering the safety of the state for suspected links with Tuareg rebels. He has been held ever since.

On Tuesday the prosecutors asked an appeal court in the capital city Niamey to change the original charge against Kaka to "actions liable to harm national defence at war time" from "complicity to undermine the authority of the state." 

If found guilty under this new charge, instead of facing a life sentence as he does with the current charge, he faces up to five years in jail and a fine ranging from 1 to five million Francs CFA (1,500 to 7,500 Euros). The court is due to give its verdict on October 7.

“It is a grave miscarriage of justice that our colleague has spent one year in jail despite the fact that twice the justice system has ordered him released,” Baglo said. “With the change in the charges, it is clear that the prosecutors do not have a real case against him.”

On July 23 a judge dismissed the case against Kaka but the General Prosecutor appealed the decision and the journalist was kept in detention. It was the second time a judge ordered the release of the journalist.

On November 16, 2007, a magistrate decided not to accept as evidence the tapes of Kaka’s conversations with the rebels as they were not obtained legally. The tapes were the only evidence the prosecution had.

Lawyers of El Malick Seck, jailed editor-in-chief of 24 Heures Chrono, a Dakar-based daily newspaper on September 12, 2008 appealed the three-year prison sentence given their client by a court for  publishing “false news”, “inciting the public’ and “public insult”.
Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that Demba Ciré Bathily, lead counsel, who announced the editor’s intention, said the sentence was outrageous and violates his (Seck) human rights.

The court exonerated the journalist of two other offences of “insulting the head of state”, and “possessing illegal documents”. 

“El Malick Seck is a political prisoner… There is a disproportionate punishment in relation to the content of the article that is not even up to three thousand characters … ( this verdict exposed) the unacknowledged purpose of eliminating El Malick Seck and his newspaper", Ciré Bathily told journalists.

Seck was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and his newspaper was banned from publishing for the next three months.  This followed an article in the late August edition of 24 Heures Chrono, that linked President Abdoulaye Wade and his son to a case of money laundering from Cote’d’Ivoire.

Meanwhile, police personnel of the Criminal Investigation Department on September 13 seized the day’s publication, claiming that they were enforcing the court’s order. The defence counsel has condemned the police action saying it acted ultra vires, since the matter is still pending in court. 

Media Foundation for West Africa 

New York, September 12, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed byaSenegalese judge’s decision today to sentence a newspaper editor to three years in prison on criminal charges in connection with an editorial about President Abdoulaye Wade and his son. Today's ruling came on the heels of Thursday's sentencing of 12 individuals to several years in prison for ransacking two private newspapers last month.

A criminal court judge in the capital, Dakar, convicted El Malick Seck, managing editor of the private daily 24 Heures Chrono, under several penal code statutes including offending the head of state, publishing false news, andthreatening public order, according to news reports. Seck has been jailed since he first faced police questioning in late August.

Defense lawyer Demba Ciré Bathily told CPJ that he has appealed the ruling, which also banned24 Heures Chrono from circulation for a period of three months. The paper has been in circulation since July, according to Editor-in-Chief Sambou Biagui.

“Despite repeated claims by President Abdoulaye Wade to end the use of criminal libel laws, El MalickSeck faces a severe prison sentence. Troubling as well is the censorship that has been imposed on24 Heures Chrono,” CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes said. “Senegal’s press freedom credentials are deteriorating. CPJ urges the president to adhere to his pronouncements and ensure cases such as24 Heures Chrono are a thing of the past.”

The public prosecutor had requested a five-year prison term against Seck, who was arraigned on September 3 after five days of interrogation in the custody of the Criminal Investigations Division. Police impounded the offending edition of24 Heures Chrono, searched Seck’s residence, and temporarily sealed the newspaper over a front-page editorial saying that Wade and his son Karim, a special adviser, were implicated in a money-laundering case. Neither Wade nor his son have responded to the story, which was based on purported allegations made by an Ivorian politician in 2006, according to local journalists. No official allegation or charge has been made against Wade or his son.

The paper24 Heures Chrono was one of two vandalized last month, just three days after then-Transport Minister Farba Senghor threatened unspecified retaliation against the paper and three others over critical stories. Senghor denied any involvement, but he was sacked from the government, stripped of judicial immunity, and questioned by a judge over the incident.

On Thursday, a criminal court in Dakar sentenced 12 individuals, including a driver and two bodyguards of Senghor, to five to six years in prison and a total of 22 million CFA francs in damages, according to news reports. 

Senegal has been considered a haven for press freedom in Africa, but this year has been marked by hostile government rhetoric toward the media.

CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information, visit www.cpj.org.

Thousands have been affected by flooding in more than 40 neighbourhoods across Senegal, including 21 Dakar suburbs according to the Senegalese fire rescue services. AFP has reported at least one drowning.

Dakar neighbourhoods affected include Pikine, Guédiawaye, Thiaroye and Diamaguène, according to Mayé Konate, spokesman the National Association of Firefighters.

Rainfall is up by 70 percent compared to the first week in September 2007, according to the Senegalese Meteorological Organization. Drainage canals across the capital are full, said Konate.

On 4 September the government launched a national emergency response strategy, directing US$650,000 to water pumping in submerged neighbourhoods. Up to 60 rescue teams are now pumping water from the streets into canals, ponds or directly into the sea, according to Prime Minister Shekih Hadjibou Soumaré.

During his tour of flooded areas, Soumaré told reporters "Following more heavy rains in recent days there remains much more to be done [to help flooded neighbourhoods]. I call on everyone, including the private sector to help the state in preparingfor further floods.”

Angry victims

In Pikine, one of the worst-affected areas, on 6 September citizens protested against what they saw as the government’s inadequate response by upturning two public transport buses, leading local authorities to position police in front of government buildings.

Many families here were forced to flee their homes and shelter in the local school. During past flooding, schools throughout the country have been turned into official temporary shelters receiving government help but this year, “this must be the last option,” Interior Minister Cheikh Tidiane Sy, announced on 6 September.

The prime minister has pledged help is on the way, but has not specified when. "I am aware of their demands…The government, with its partners inside and outside of the country, will bring relief to these people in flooded areas."

The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) is delivering emergency supplies to some 50 families displaced in these schools, while non-governmental organisations such as Islamic Relief are delivering food parcels to affected families.

But Youcef Ait Chellouche, disaster management coordinator at the IFRC, warns the problems are only beginning. “We need to be ready for potential epidemics – like cholera – to break out as the water starts to subside. We are closely monitoring this situation.”

Flooding worsened a cholera epidemic already underway in Dakar in 2005, which eventually infected more than 23,000 people.

IRIN