Pierre
Vanneste

BARGNY - Yonoo Yokkute  (Sénégal)

( ongoing project)

Located 35 kilometers from Dakar, the Senegalese town of Bargny is on the verge of becoming the capital’s new major industrial suburb. Trapped between rising sea levels due to climate change and a forced shift to the industrial sector, Bargny seems to have become a vast construction site of dying worlds. The community of Lebou fishermen and Fulani herders, who own family properties passed down through generations, are gradually being stripped of their resources and made dependent on the industries moving into the area.

Projects planned for the region include a coal-fired power plant, a mineral and bulk port, and soon, a steel mill. These infrastructures will only worsen environmental problems: air pollution and increased CO2 emissions, destruction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the seizure of land and water resources. As families along the coast lose their homes each year to the advancing sea, without any relocation solutions, the state declares their lands of public utility to hand over to industrial project developers.

Perched at the edge of the world, Bargny challenges our society and its choices, echoing ongoing ecological disasters and bearing witness to Senegal's forced march towards "emergence."

A project co-created with journalist and author Laurence Grun.

First chapter of this project "Bargny, ici commence l'émergence" , codirected with Laurence Grun