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Climate change: Africa gets ready
- Source: Africa Renewal, Volume 21, Issue 2, Jul 2007, p. 14 - 18
- French
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- 31 Jul 2007
Abstract
It was not an easy life. But for fisherman Mohammadu Bello and his nine children the shallow waters of Lake Chad, a vast body of fresh water at the intersection of Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon, at least provided a living. Sales of lake catfish were brisk at the Doron Baga fish market, sustaining his family. But no more. Over the past 30 years the lake has steadily retreated from its former shores, leaving Mr. Bello and his neighbours high and dry and raising the prospect that the lake — once one of Africa’s largest — could vanish entirely. “Some 27 years ago when I started fishing on the lake,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation in January, “we used to catch fish as large as a man.” Now, he said, the fish are small and what little is available is trucked into the market over the dry lakebed.
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