The rising sea imperils Tanzania’s coastal communities
In the Ununio neighbourhood of Dar es Salaam, the beauty of nature is complemented by equally beautiful architecture. Both are under threat from the rising sea.
As the rising sun’s rays glimmer through the mangrove trees along the Indian Ocean coastline, crabs scuttle in coral reefs and catfish dart in and out of ponds. Here in the Ununio neighbourhood of Dar es Salaam, the beauty of nature is complemented by equally beautiful architecture. Both are under threat from the rising sea.
Some apartments have already been abandoned and are now engulfed by sea marshes. A sagging single-storey home is submerged in knee-deep water and infested by green algae. An old Mercedes-Benz is rusting in a submerged driveway.
Elsewhere, saline intrusion is quietly peeling the paint off homes and choking vegetation. Residents can often taste salt in the contaminated groundwater.
“The sea is moving closer to my house, and saltwater is eroding wall plaster,” says Andrew Kimweri, a lawyer who lives nearby. “My home is being swallowed.”
As the sea levels rise, seawater is seeping into ground aquifers. Residents in the Ilala, Temeke and Kunduchi areas of Dar es Salaam tell The Continent that water from the local wells is no longer potable. “The well water is too salty to drink,” says Anna Kisesa, who lives close by in Kunduchi. “You can’t even use it for washing clothes.”
Scientists say rising sea levels are driven by climate change, which is melting glaciers at the earth’s poles and driving more water into the oceans.
In the Rufiji Delta, 156km south of Dar es Salaam, saltwater is devastating rice paddies and the livelihoods of the farmers who depend on them. “Saltwater is our big enemy. It is affecting our incomes,” says Omari Jumanne, a farmer at Nyamisati village.
Scientists say rising sea levels are driven by climate change, which is melting glaciers at the earth’s poles and driving more water downstream into the oceans.
But in Zanzibar, a group of women are swimming against the rising tide.
They have turned to farming sponge. The puffy aquatic crop is exceptionally soft yet durable. Buyers use it as a bath loofah or for cleaning surfaces. Notably, it is a crop that is touted as being especially resilient to changes in the climate.
Among the new sponge farmers is Hindu Rajabu, a 31-year-old mother of two, who wears goggles and a snorkel as she tends to her floating sponge farm in a shallow lagoon. “They’re very delicate, you must handle them with proper care,” she says. Rajabu switched from farming seaweed to sponge cultivation in 2020, and is now earning nearly four times as much as she was before, going from a monthly income of 70,000 Tanzanian shillings ($28) to 250,000 shillings ($100).
Her success story is an isolated case, however. The much larger seaweed industry, which employs tens of thousands of Zanzibari women farmers, has suffered due to rising temperatures, stronger winds, and erratic rainfall. According to official statistics, production of seaweed dropped by 47% between 2002 and 2012 – and the climate has only become more erratic in the decade since.
Even if world leaders at COP28 – the big United Nations climate conference – succeed in their ambition to limit global temperature increases to 1.5°C, this will still lead to further sea level rises.
The UN estimates that developing countries, including Tanzania, will collectively need at least $200-billion every year by 2030 to adapt to new climatic conditions, including rising sea levels. Let’s hope there’s a big market for loofahs.