The First Lady of the Gambia has selected by the African Union Commission to lead the West African region’s efforts in ensuring a pollution-free Africa.
Fatou Bah-Barrow was selected at the just concluded at the First Ladies’ Dialogue during the 32nd ordinary summit of the African Union held on February 10th in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
As part of her role, Ms Bah-Barrow will spearhead the campaign to ban and eradicate plastics on the continent.
The First Lady said she will use her new role to help the gradual eradication of plastics through advocacy and awareness raising on the impacts of plastics and share experience on strategies and measures being undertaken to address the menace of plastics.
She said the Government of the Gambia is conscious of the health and environmental hazards associated with the growing demand for plastics, and remains committed to maintain the ban on plastic bags.
Ms Bah-Barrow expressed her appreciation to the African Union Commission and her fellow first ladies from across Africa at the High Level Working Session on Banning Plastics in Africa, for the laudable initiative and the honour bestowed on her as champion for West Africa.
Plastic may be linked to:
1. Cancer.
2. Birth defects.
3. Poor immune system and
4. Environmental pollution etc
The Gambia needs to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to deal with the environmental and health impact of plastic.
Charity begins at home.
#PlasticfreeGambia
If you can’t refuse it, then use it by sitting down on it. How?
Sort plastic waste out properly in a sorting plant. Environmentally friendly melting plants, with respect to fumes exhaustion during melting process, and the fumes trapping systems, would need to melt and reprocess the plastic waste. The reprocessed plastic should be needed yet again by manufacturers. That means lots of jobs!
With a serious, and an accountable investment in an expertly coordinated research program, needless to say, to be undertaken by the technical institutes and the UTG, to see whether plastics can be recycled into valuable and healthy ‘up-the-Albert-Market’ construction other industrial material, for instance: DPCs, if plastic can be integrated with certain organic material such as processed wood waste, or clay to make planks and roof slates? Corrugated iron sheets cause a radiation where temperatures reach 40°c and over!! But, a bit of liquid plastic used to harden refined clay, to make it more water resistant, can probably be a product, also a bit more resistant to sun/heat than grilling corrugated iron sheets. If, plastic in the Gambia can be recycled to produce sewage and irrigation system pipes ..? Unaffordable construction materials like cement, metal, glass , wood and plastic is why the majority of Gambians are living what could barely be called housing. The aforementioned are questions driven by a restless curiosity in my individual, as to whether the UTG and technical institutes of the Gambia can make discoveries that would play the most significant parts in bringing about development in the Gambian, ECOWAS and the Africa. The government therefore, should invest in a serious research that would not mean throwing money some where to be a source of FIRINGO for bloodsucking rats. The ‘plastic charity’ here should begin in the Gambia without any underlying agenda to run corruption.
If we can’t find enough of that plastic waste to recycle to manufacture plastic products and money to invest in recycling and manufacturing plants, then we should already start refusing plastic waste of all sorts.
A Nigerian PHD student in engineering has come up with an ingenious technique to make durable building materials from cassava peelings which is only waste in Nigerian. The process and the equipment for turning the waste material into construction materials are his idea. So far so good.
But brace yourself for what’s about to come is nothing sort of a disaster of the biggest magnitude for our continent.
A certain university in Europe offered him a scholarship and a research grant of 150.000 Euros.
A few years down the line, he was successful in streamlining the process and the production design. Then he realized the patent and the process belongs to the said university. Before both could be deployed in Afrikka, one will have to buy the machines from a factory that licensed the patent at huge costs and of course pay for transportation.
The lesson is that Afrikkan governments get their priorities totally mixed up. As Bourne alluded to, it’s goddamn frustrating to know those we pay to work for us are only interested in living flamboyant and extravagant lives at the expense of the poor and the meek.
Fatou Bah is the one who is suppose to advocate against plastic and bring awareness to its harmful effects on heath and the environment. Isn’t it the same Fatou Bah who still have to answer for the missing millions that from the sky landed in her foundations account and quickly disappeared like a lightening flash? This most be some kind of a joke.
I mean…………But it’s the Afrikkan Union again. They even hire killers and torturers like Edward Singhateh to be commission Vice Presidents.
The status quo will never render us salvation. What is needed is leaders with moral integrity and sincerity to better our wretched living conditions. The role of the general population is to be ready to fight for what belongs to them by all and every means necessary.
Yours in the service of The Gambia and Afrikka, I remain.
I bet Fatou Bah’s fridge is packed with imported plastic bottled water.
The campaign is good for publicity and lining pockets, but the truth is, it’s just a show.
African Governments are too bankrupt to seriously invest in sustainable waste management processes.
Some countries have even signed contracts with foreign firms to receive waste that they are not equipped to handle. Some of these waste materials are very toxic and dangerous to the health of their populations and the environment.
We need to be vigilant in The Gambia because the problem is only getting worse, since China stopped being the rubbish bin of the advanced economies.
I can’t disagree a bit with you here Mwalimu. In fact, I’m adamantly with the belief, our higher learners at the UGT, The Gambia College and GTTI and related technical institutes, only need to roll up their sleeves and get real ‘curious and messy’ (not just by wearing high visibility jackets and helmets over gowns and kaftans made of meters of textile), in order for them to prevail with wonders for our livelihoods. Perhaps Andrew will agree with me in the latter..
It’s what it takes to do it in my opinion; physicians, chemists, engineers of all walks, etc. and etc. may learn all laws, theories, formulae, rules …, but it has to take yet someone curious enough to want to know – what will happen – if I do this, or put this and that together, using available techniques, resources or waste products in his/her environ. I don’t think those with gifted abilities to create prototypes have to be found among only the higher learners in the field of science and technology and that, whether an advanced learner is creative or not, they should be helpful to those ingenious creative private citizens, who may be without the least formal school education, in one way or the other. If an ingenious citizen happens to invent a prototype that is proved to be a safe, qualitative, useful to livelihoods in the Gambia, and affordable a product, his/her achievement should be recognized by the government not just with medals and applause, but should carefully invest in his/her efforts with an aim of getting its investment back with interest when full fledged success arrives. Such projects should be a sustainable source of tax revenue and employment of citizens and residents, if may need to mention. The government’s investment and research group’s involvements, should not in anyway be a lure to hijack or again the upper hand in what is in part an parcel a private citizen’s initiative. Well ‘government’, isn’t it that it should all be about – managing and putting every sort of resources together
that can inspire and facilitate productivity – making essential things that are of invaluable uses domestically before the whole continent and beyond can benefit from it? You don’t just want to discover something vital to livelihoods in your country and jump at a scholarship from anywhere, that you may end up sold out with discovery and invention in one bit, to heavyweight mass producers.
If one discovers and invents safer, healthier, durable and affordable building materials in the Gambia for instance, you want to start from low scale production that will enable investment in more research programs in production boost technology and bigger market preparedness. With regards to innovation and invention, this is not where we want to do our homework but to say, the sky is the limit as far as creativity and productivity is concerned, if we restlessly and curiously keep trying.