Informal settlements like Kroo Bay serve as home for at least 35% of the population of Freetown, which recently appointed an urban heat officer to help manage the effects of climate change.
Photo: Peter Yeung/Bloomberg CityLab
Africa’s First Heat Officer Faces a Daunting Task
In the capital of Sierra Leone, crowding and poverty complicate efforts to protect a city of 1.2 million from the effects of climate change.
From a distance, Kroo Bay, a slum in Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown, resembles a gigantic overheating engine: Thousands of rust-colored tin shacks stand in rows under the sweltering West African sun, divided only by trash-filled streams of sewage.
“It’s warm, warm, warm,” says Mariama Barrie, a 34-year-old mother of three who rents a one-room hut in the heart of the poverty-stricken district. “It feels like we’re being cooked alive. We’re cooking like pigs in here.”