Atlantic waves devour african villages as climate change accelerates coastal erosion crisis

Along Africa’s Atlantic coastline, rising seas are claiming several meters of land each year, wiping entire communities off the map and destroying homes, farms, and historic sites. This devastating coastal erosion results from a dangerous combination of climate change impacts and human interference with natural coastal defenses.

The village of Lahou-Kpanda in Côte d’Ivoire exemplifies this crisis. Once stretching over 2 kilometers wide, this peninsula community has shrunk to just 200 meters as waves devour more than 6.5 feet of coastline annually. “Our village used to stretch over 2 kilometers. Today, it’s only 200 meters wide,” explains Emmanuel Idi, a local guide in his twenties who has witnessed his hometown disappearing before his eyes.

Climate change drives much of this destruction through rising sea levels and intensified storms, but human activities have made coastal communities even more vulnerable. In Lahou-Kpanda’s case, the construction of the Kossou Dam in the 1970s disrupted the Bandama River’s natural flow, eliminating the sediment deposits that once protected the coast from erosion. Colonial-era landmarks including the district office, hospital, and prison have already vanished beneath the waves. Only a stone church built in 1933 continues to stand against the ocean’s relentless advance.

This pattern repeats across West and Central Africa’s 570-kilometer coastline, where infrastructure projects have inadvertently destroyed the natural barriers that once shielded communities from the sea’s power, leaving them defenseless against climate change’s mounting impacts.