In The Gambia, the small coastal town of Gunjur is battling a Chinese fishmeal factory

A tall rusty palisade separates the vegetable garden from the enormous silos of the fishmeal factory of the Chinese company Golden Lead. Here, in the small coastal town of Gunjur, 50 kilometers south of Banjul, Gambia’s capital, women are still struggling to grow vegetables.

But, despite the fence, the farmer Fatou Maneh notices with annoyance that the eggplant plants have been flooded by yellowish water which continuously escapes from the factory and pours into the vegetable crops. “Most of the production is used to directly feed my family and I sell the surplus. We fight to keep these fields because if I don’t work here, where can I go? »laments the mother of the family.

Established since 2016, the company Golden Lead very quickly tried to expand its site. This was without counting the anger of the inhabitants. After a complaint initiated in 2017 by members of local civil society, the case was tried on December 2, 2021 in the Banjul court. Since then, an ordinance has been drafted to prohibit any extension project on the village’s arable land.

But the decision has not been formalized, as the Chinese company has not yet signed it. And the battle is far from over. Another complaint was filed to protest against the pollution of the river and the damage to the environment caused by the activity of the factory. The case was due to appear in court on December 14, but the hearing was postponed with no deadline set.

Procrastination of justice

Disturbing business, while diplomatic relations – broken for twenty-one years – between the Gambian government and China resumed in 2016, against the promise not to maintain any official relationship with Taiwan. Former dictator Yahya Jammeh had bet on investments from the Asian giant to revive a struggling economy. Current President Adama Barrow has maintained this course, as he told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, who met in Beijing in 2017, the year he came to power.

Procrastination of justice is a disappointment for Ahmed Manjang, an environmental activist by Gunjur. In 2017, the latter had discovered, amazed, red water and oil floating on the surface of the lagoon, as well as dead fish and crabs near the mangroves. “The problems started when they dumped their untreated waste into the environment and then into the sea via pipes that go more than 300 meters into the sea”he explains.

Immediately, he contacted the national environmental agency, which began by taking the case head-on, accusing Golden Lead of dumping its wastewater without authorization. But the agency finally withdrew its complaint against promises of reparations from the Chinese company.

Ahmed Manjang points the finger at corruption and assures that it was government intervention that blocked the procedure. The Secretary General of the Ministry of Fisheries was suspended from his duties in October 2020 following suspicions of corruption with Chinese industrialists.

Phosphate, nitrogen, arsenic

Trained as a microbiologist, Ahmed Manjang then decided to take the investigation in hand. In 2017, he took an extract of the reddish water and a sample of waste inside the factory, which he sent to a laboratory in Germany to analyze them and check that the two were indeed linked. The results are alarming.

“The indicators concerning phosphate or nitrogen are 40 times higher than international standards”, notes the biologist, also concerned about the presence of arsenic, an extremely toxic and carcinogenic chemical substance. Asked about this, the Ministry of Fisheries did not respond to our requests.

Karamo Touray, a young local environmental activist, looks disapprovingly at the factory and its smokestacks. The imposing silhouette of the industrial complex breaks the postcard image of the long white beach that borders Gunjur where fishermen come and go, unloading their canoes with heavy baskets of fish.

“Gunjur no longer attracts foreign or local tourists since the Chinese arrived. Before, small shops sold fresh juices instead of the factory which now gives off a nauseating odor”notes Karamo Touray, who says he is ready to fight. “Very few people in our community have benefited from their installation”he decides.

“They are looting all our resources”

On his arrival, Golden Lead had nevertheless promised, assures Karamo Tourau, to develop the fish market, create 600 jobs and build an asphalt road to replace the track between the village and the fishing wharf. But none of this came true. In this locality, which lives mainly on the product of fishing, the women who took care of transforming the resource into dried or braised fish, foods very popular in the region, even lost work.

“The price of the basket of fish has increased from 50 dalasis to 350 or even 500 dalasis [de 0,8 euro à 8 euros]. The fishermen then prefer to sell to the Chinese whose needs are so great that they sometimes buy everything. And I have nothing more to transform”complains Anta Jobe, 40 years old and mother of eight children.

According to Greenpeace, more than 500,000 tonnes of fish are taken each year from West African waters and are processed into meal or oil for aquaculture and animal feed, mainly for European and Asian markets.

In the village, fishermen share a tea, prepared on a small charcoal stove. All affirm that the catches are much worse since the factory is installed in Gunjur. ” Before, I came back from fishing with 200 to 250 baskets of fish. Since the Chinese are here, I only take 25. And every year it decreases”says Salif Ndoure, a fisherman who refuses to sell anything to the Chinese.

“They plunder all our resources, they don’t respect the sea, they even catch juveniles [les poissons jeunes qui, normalement, ne doivent pas être pêchés pour leur permettre de grossir et de se reproduire] and they break up breeding habitats”, denounces the fisherman. He is only waiting for one thing: for the factory to disappear.