- Coastal erosion along the coastline of West and Central Africa has been attributed to both natural causes and to human causes, including infrastructure development.
- With support from international finance agencies, governments cross the region have favored intensive engineering solutions to attempt to protect eroding shorelines.
- Environmentalists say nature-based interventions such as restoring mangrove forests that can stabilize soil and protect marine biodiversity.
Across many parts of Africa’s Atlantic coastline, the sea is advancing several metres inland each year, destroying homes, infrastructure, farmland and heritage sites. Many coastal communities have already been erased from the map.
Several factors combine to explain the threatening loss of land along the West and Central African coast. The effects of global climate change, with rising sea levels and warmer waters causing more extreme weather, are multiplied by large and small infrastructure projects that have disrupted coastal ecosystems’ natural resilience to the power of ocean waves and currents.
The Ivorian village of Lahou-Kpanda, standing on a peninsula in a lagoon fed by the Bandama River, has become a dramatic symbol of coastal erosion along Cote d’Ivoire’s 570 kilometers (355 miles) of coastline. Powerful waves, exacerbated by rising sea levels linked to climate change, are undermining the coastline, causing it to erode by more than 2 meters (6.5 feet) per year.
“Our village used to stretch over 2 kilometers [1.2 miles]. Today, it’s only 200 m [650 ft] wide,” reports Emmanuel Idi, a young local guide in his 20s.
The construction of the Kossou Dam in the 1970s altered the flow of the Bandama River and disrupted the natural balance that protected the coast, exacerbating erosion. Several notable colonial-era buildings here, including the district office, the hospital and the prison, have already disappeared. Only the church, built in 1933, with its stone walls and orange-tiled roof, still stands firm against the waves’ onslaught.
The most harrowing aspect is the graveyard. “The graves have been looted — some bodies have been exhumed and moved, but some are still there,” Idi says. “Sometimes fishermen find bones in their nets.”
Loss of cultural heritage
Some 2,500 km (1,550 mi) south and east, communities on the coast of the Republic of Congo are also increasingly at risk from erosion. The issue is particularly visible in Pointe-Noire, the country’s main port and second largest city, and in the Loango Bay, just to the north, where the sea is washing away precious cultural heritage.
A historic slave trading post on the bay’s sandy cliffs has been severely affected by erosion caused by powerful Atlantic currents. Vanessa Claude Mavila, the president of the Eboko Foundation, an environmental NGO based in Pointe Noire, explains that the local community fears that part of their history will soon disappear here. “Sacred tombs are disappearing, causing growing concern among residents,” she says.
Pointe-Noire’s estuary has also suffered a dramatic shoreline retreat. “Encroaching seas have almost swallowed up the Songolo estuary and are a danger to local fishermen. This is just one example of the tragedies caused by coastal erosion in Congo,” explains Bionick Andrey Mokoke, president of the Sacred Nature Protection Alliance (ASPN).
Along the country’s coastline, erosion has damaged homes and agricultural land, and degraded coastal ecosystems, says Mokoke. “The retreat of the coastline, up to 50 m [165 ft] per year in some areas, also threatens economic development, reducing natural resources and affecting coastal tourism,” he says. “This erosion also compromises biodiversity conservation, as coastal habitats such as mangroves play a crucial role in preventing erosion and maintaining ecological balance.”
In neighboring Cameroon, Jean Biwoli, who leads conservation and monitoring at the national environment ministry, has witnessed steadily increasing erosion in the coastal city of Kribi over the past 10 years. “When you try to visit certain areas, you see that trees that used to provide shade and prevent erosion aren’t there anymore. In Ebomé, about 10 houses have already been destroyed, and two hotels, Malapane and Palm Beach, have been greatly damaged,” Biwoli says.
Along the beach, there are large holes left by uprooted trees, bare rocks and what remains of the road. Debris from cinder blocks, fences and posts is scattered throughout the area. “This is a seawall that a hotel owner built to protect his hotel from the powerful ocean waters. Unfortunately, the structure did not hold up against erosion,” Kribi resident Laurent Ndongo says.
In 2023, the facades of three hotels crumbled into the sea, and dozens of homes were swept away. A fishing pier and all its equipment was engulfed, leaving four fishermen dead. Some residents have packed up and moved to other areas.
Auguste Owona, a traditional chief as well as a teacher at Kribi’s bilingual high school, says the construction of a deep-water port, an oil pipeline and the landing of the Brazil-Cameroon fiber optic cable have all exacerbated coastal erosion in Cameroon. “The road that connects Kribi to the Littoral and Central regions could disappear if we don’t take action. It is being eaten away every day. Erosion is progressing rapidly. The bilingual high school is at risk. I think we should already be thinking about relocating the school.”
Emmanuel Ngandi Ngoua, the chief of Nzami, another village within Kribi’s city limits, is worried. “We are powerless in the face of what is happening. We feel like there is a conspiracy against our people. These waters disturb our sleep. We think it is only a matter of time before the waters come and engulf us at night.”
Ngoua, a fisherman now in his 70s, remembers that a decade ago, there was a row of coconut palms and other trees planted by the German administration a century or more ago. This has since been destroyed.
Téclaire Kingué, 40, also remembers those trees. “I am a Kribi native. Ten years ago, the sea was not that close. All the trees have been cut down, which contributes to coastal degradation. These trees [almond, calabash and coconut trees], which were planted by the Germans, are adapted to the beach and can withstand the salinity level, unlike other plants.”
She hopes beach restoration measures will be implemented with contribution from local authorities, civil society and local communities. “Assisted regeneration of these ecosystems is necessary to create a barrier between the land and the sea, to restore the mangroves. We need to build dykes,” Kingué suggests.
Habitat destruction
Beyond socioeconomic infrastructure, we are also witnessing the deterioration of biodiversity, particularly sea turtles, which are particularly vulnerable to coastal erosion. “Coastal erosion and the formation of beach rock strips reduce the available nesting space. Erosion also forms sand micro-cliffs that turtles cannot climb, sometimes forcing them to lay their eggs in areas exposed to humidity. However, if a nest is wet, the eggs will not be able to hatch; this has a major impact on turtle reproduction,” explains zoologist Gabriel Segniagbeto, a scientific adviser for AGBO-ZEGUE, the Togolese Association for Nature Conservation.
Coastal erosion is leading to the disappearance of invertebrates in the meso-littoral and infralittoral zones, while destroying many other species’ habitat. “In the past, these invertebrates were a source of food for various waterbird colonies that frequented the coast. Today, these invertebrates have almost entirely disappeared, and with them the birds that depended on their presence,” Segniagbeto says.
He reports that local authorities have already considered diverting the road, but he does not see this as a solution to the problem, as homes are also at risk. The population has no means to protect themselves. “The ocean is a threat, and to say that the population can prevent erosion is a stretch,” the local resident insisted.
Destabilizing infrastructure
In Togo, coastal erosion is fundamentally linked to the construction of two major infrastructure projects, says Tchannibi Bakatimbe, from the ministry of environment and forest resources. “Coastal erosion, as we know it today, began on the Togolese coast in the 1960s. It was caused by the combination of Ghana’s Akosombo Dam, built between 1960 and 1964, and the port of Lomé. It was after these two structures were built that erosion first started to be observed in the area immediately to the east of the port,” he says.
These two projects have disrupted the balance of the structural dynamics of the coast, says Kouami Dodji Adjaho, a University of Lomé researcher. “Analysis shows that these structures have an impact on coastal dynamics, on the balance between the beach sediment input and output. We know that these inputs come mainly from rivers, which transport sediment from the continent’s [interior] to the beach. The Akossombo Dam, for example, blocks some of the sediment that should reach the coast to be redistributed by the littoral drift [coastal current], thus contributing to the natural formation of the beach. The dam therefore has a direct impact on beach regeneration, as does other infrastructure like port jetties and groynes, which also disrupt the distribution of sediment.”
Although the local populations are victims of coastal erosion, Bakatimbe says, they are also contributing to the coastline’s retreat. “Coastal communities can amplify the erosion that we are seeing by removing marine sand and gravel despite awareness-raising and the formal ban on this activity. It’s an amplifying action because it removes sediment from the coast, and it’s a loss of income in the context of coastal transit.”
The sea’s advance in Togo is alarming. Bakatimbe says as much as 800 m (2,625 ft) of beach has been lost in certain places. In Agbodrafo, a town in the eastern suburbs of the capital, Lomé, this has produced a field of abandoned and damaged houses. “I was born over there, by that well, in my father’s house,” local resident Agbodjin Agbé Messandjin says. “I remember when I was still little and this road was paved. Today it is partly stripped by the sea, and the government had to build a new road.”
Fishing, the main livelihood for most of the local population, has been severely affected by coastal erosion, which has exposed rocks on the beaches in several places. “The advancing sea has a big impact on our fishing; we can’t catch fish the way we used to. We are barely eating at the moment. The advancing sea has revealed rocks that are tearing our nets and damaging our canoes. We have no means to resist the advancing sea,” says Apélété Denor, president of Hand in Hand, a fishers’ association in Agbodrafo.
This has unmoored some communities, says Sylvain Akati, director of the NGO AJEDI (Youth Action for Integral Development). “Faced with the advancing sea, some of them have had to move, while other families have lost their heritage, engulfed by the sea, and some places of worship have also been devastated. This has led to fragmented families and social fabric. It is also exacerbating poverty in coastal areas as people lose their market gardens.”
Engineering the coast
In Benin, the predominantly sandy coastline is particularly exposed to waves crashing in from the Atlantic. A combination of factors repeated elsewhere on the West African coast — urban expansion along the shore, the commercial mining of marine sand and the proliferation of dams and reservoirs — are all contributing to severe coastal erosion ravaging communities in Hillacondji, Agoué, Grand-Popo, Ouidah and Cotonou.
In Grand-Popo, the sea is swallowing farmland, with several villages disappearing underwater, along with part of their history. Some residents have resorted to using small spaces around their homes as cultivation areas to continue market gardening, their main source of income.
Vincent Coffi, originally from Docloboé, a village in the region that was submerged a few years ago, laments: “Now that my children are grown up, they ask me where their village was. Even though I know that it was a natural phenomenon that made me lose my family home, it still hurts.”
Here, management measures against coastal erosion rely primarily on intensive engineering solutions. To this end, the government has installed groynes east of Cotonou for coastal protection. These structures aim to stabilize the coast by reducing wave energy and retaining sediment, although their high construction and maintenance costs limit their widespread deployment.
With each groyne installed, erosion moves farther east, creating new challenges. They also do not always guarantee a permanent solution, as evidenced by the collapse of poorly maintained structures in Ghana after only 15 years.
Faced with mounting impacts, neighbouring Togo has also launched several initiatives to protect its coast and preserve the livelihoods of coastal communities with support from the West Africa Coastal Areas (WACA), a $222 million program to address coastal erosion across the region funded by the World Bank.
“WACA is a regional project that aims to strengthen the resilience of coastal populations. Its intervention focuses first on environmental issues, by establishing infrastructure designed to mitigate the main risks to the coast, such as coastal erosion, flooding and pollution. The second component of the project consists of strengthening the capacities of local communities to effectively increase their resilience,” says Adou Rahim Alimi Assimiou, coordinator of the WACA project in Togo.
For the infrastructure component of its work in Togo, the WACA program has built groynes and breakwaters between the Autonomous Port of Lomé and Sanvee-Condji, aiming to stabilize the coastline for period of 50 years. “The project has so far concentrated on the segment from Agbodrafo to the Benin border. Here we have built seven new groynes and repacked the sand between them. We have also repaired and extended six groynes at Aného in addition to installing a 400-meter (1,300-foot) breakwater and a 1.2-km (0.75-mi) sand dune. All these structures help limit erosion, because the groynes’ purpose is to fix the coastline,” Assimiou explains.
There are plans to install groynes and other submerged breakwaters in several other countries in the region. Seventy kilometers [43 mi] of beach reclamation work is already underway between Kribi and Campo in Cameroon. Groynes, however, do not resolve the problem, because according to experts, they only move the problem elsewhere.
In Côte d’Ivoire, too, WACA is carrying out an engineering project at Lahou-Kpanda to stabilize the sandbar at the mouth of the Bandama River between the lagoon and the sea, which has been identified as a focal point for severe coastal erosion.
Engineering solutions, sometimes referred to as gray infrastructure, are being complemented with so-called soft solutions to strengthen the coastline. In the Republic of Congo, where parts of the shore are retreating at 2-3 m (6.5-10 ft) per year, the authorities are combining construction of protective dykes with restoring mangroves that act as natural barriers to the waves and reviving the coconut industry, as coconut trees’ roots help to stabilize the soil.
Associations like the Eboko Foundation are prominent. “Planting memorial trees and the inauguration of the Eboko orchard are actions that aim to curb erosion but also raise awareness among communities about the importance of protecting their environment. These initiatives help stabilize the soil while creating a link between heritage preservation and sustainable development,” Mavila says.
The government, for its part, has planned a series of initiatives to counter coastal erosion. They plan to establish a museum of memory and slavery commemorating the “Slave Route,” with the aim of diversifying the national economy, and to construct water retention basins for better local water management in the Republic of Congo.
“We need to combine traditional approaches with modern solutions. Replanting mangroves also means restoring part of our cultural heritage. Mangroves were an integral part of coastal life centuries ago. The disappearance of these habitats affects the food chain and species’ ability to survive, thus threatening the ecological balance of coastal areas,” Mavila emphasizes.
In Benin, an NGO called Corde has been working to restore mangroves over a 9-hectare (22-acre) area in the Djègbabji district in Ouidah for the past five years. “Mangroves act as a natural barrier during extreme weather events,” says Corde coordinator Ebénézer Houndjinou. “Restoring mangroves helps stabilize the coastline to combat erosion. When we started, it was completely degraded, but we planted mangroves and restored it.”
Communities refuse to disappear
Three fishermen brave the brownish waves on Côte d’Ivoire’s Lahou-Kpanda beach, strewn with plastic and plant debris. In the distance, wind-bent palm trees seem to bow to the inevitable. A few young people still play on the soccer field with its rusty goals, as if defying fate. Many residents have moved away inland, but the school, with its Ivorian flag fluttering in the sea breeze, continues to welcome children.
Beyond the sandbar protection and stabilization works backed by WACA, the villagers are also working to secure residential areas and community spaces such as the school and places of worship. Despite its growing vulnerability, the village has demonstrated remarkable resilience. Its fishers have adapted their practices in the face of the changing river mouth and coastline.
Protecting the village is part of a comprehensive approach that combines technical solutions aimed at stabilizing its sandbar and preserving the social fabric. In Lahou-Kpanda, the plan to revive the coconut industry to protect the coast is particularly resonant. The palm trees that still border the village constitute one of the last natural defenses against the advance of the ocean. The Ivorian government is monitoring developments at Lahou-Kpanda as a possible model for defensive work in other threatened areas. If measures adopted here succeed, it could inform the development of sustainable solutions along the entire West African coast.
For the residents of Lahou-Kpanda, time is running out. Pointing to the tiles on a partially collapsed grave, the young guide, Emmanuel Idi, fears time is running out for his home town, whose modern structure has failed to withstand the ocean’s repeated assaults.
The erosion of the village’s gutted graveyard and many others like it along the West and Central African coast tells the story of communities under pressure. The village’s palm trees continue to stand like fragile sentinels keeping watch over communities that refuse to disappear.
Banner image: A house gradually being swallowed up by the sea in Avepozo, a suburb east of Togo’s capital, Lomé. Image by Charles Kolou for Mongabay.
This article was first published here in French on Jul. 21, 2025.
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