Grand Theft Aqua: Spoiling the sea, ruining lives
As jobs dry up, more Senegalese turn to migration.
Kiri Rupiah
A new gas extraction plant off the coast of northern Senegal was intended to bring jobs and economic prosperity, but instead is hurting local livelihoods, the Associated Press reports.
The Grand Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) project, a joint venture between British energy giant BP and US-based Kosmos Energy, began operations late last year. Located offshore from Senegal and Mauritania, the field could potentially produce 2.3-million tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year.
Amid a cost-of-living crisis, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s government is betting on the oil industry to re-energise an economy that has relied on mining, fisheries, tourism and agriculture.
On the campaign trail last year, Faye promised to create an exclusive fishing zone for locals. But fishing communities say the GTA project is hurting them. A gas leak endangered a deep-water coral reef, campaign group Greenpeace told AP. The bright lights on the GTA platform are attracting marine life, but locals are not allowed to fish there.
Last year, the AP interviewed four women who said they had been forced into sex work because their husbands, all fishermen, could no longer make a living after they had been barred from fishing in the fertile waters around the gas rig.
Even before the gas drilling began, the fishing industry was struggling. For years, foreign trawlers have been illegally fishing in Senegalese waters, forcing locals in small pirogues to venture farther out into the Atlantic.
The Institute for Security Studies estimates Senegal loses $272-million a year to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. In 2021, Senegal was the second largest fish exporter in Africa. Most of that went to Europe.
But while Europe may want Senegal’s fish, it does not want its people. As jobs dry up, more Senegalese turn to migration. In 2024, nearly 64,000 irregular migrants from West Africa reached Spain: double the 2022 figure.
According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, arrivals in the Canary Islands alone surged 200% in two years. Senegal is among the top three nationalities of arrivals to these islands.