"The factories turning West Africa’s fish into powder"

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Golden Lead is one outpost of an ambitious Chinese economic and geopolitical agenda known as the Belt and Road Initiative, [...]

In 2017, China cancelled $14m (£10m) in Gambian debt and invested $33m (£23.8m) to develop agriculture and fisheries, including Golden Lead and two other fish-processing plants along the 50-mile (80km) Gambian coast. The residents of Gunjur were told that Golden Lead would bring jobs, a fish market, and a newly paved, three-mile road through the heart of town.

Golden Lead and the other factories were rapidly built to meet an exploding global demand for fishmeal – a lucrative golden powder made by pulverising and cooking fish. Exported to the United States, Europe, and Asia, fishmeal is used as a protein-rich supplement in the booming industry of fish farming, or aquaculture. West Africa is among the world’s fastest-growing producers of fishmeal: more than 50 processing plants operate along the shores of Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, and The Gambia. The volume of fish they consume is enormous: one plant in The Gambia alone takes in more than 7,500 tons of fish a year, mostly of a local type of shad known as bonga – a silvery fish about 10in (25cm) long.

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For the area’s local fishermen, most of whom toss their nets by hand from pirogues powered by small outboard motors, the rise of aquaculture has transformed their daily working conditions: hundreds of legal and illegal foreign fishing boats, including industrial trawlers and purse seiners, criss-cross the waters off the The Gambian coast, decimating the region’s fish stocks and jeopardising local livelihoods.

After Golden Lead was fined, in 2019, it stopped releasing its toxic effluent directly into the lagoon. Instead, a long wastewater pipe was installed under a nearby public beach. Locals claimed it has been dumping waste directly into the sea. In March 2018, about a hundred and fifty local shopkeepers, youth and fishermen, wielding shovels and pickaxes, gathered on the beach to dig up the pipe and destroy it but two months later a new one was installed with the government’s approval. [...]

Golden Lead has hurt more than helped the local economy, Jabang said. But what about all of those young men hauling their baskets of fish to the factory? Jabang waved the question away dismissively: “This is not the employment we want. They’re turning us into donkeys and monkeys.” [Note: The writer contacted Golden Lead for comment, but none was forthcoming]