The city of
Dakar in Senegal decided to end 2012 with a bang, and a literal one at that. The mayor, with
great support from several companies, invested in fireworks for the New Year. At
midnight on the 31st of December, the capital city was illuminated,
following such models as “Paris, London and Rio.” There are different reports
of how much money city hall actually put into the event. The official story, as
explained by the mayor Khalifa Sall himself, is that the city provided 196.5
million Cfa (about USD 393,000) of the 1.5 billion Cfa (about USD 3,000,000)
the fireworks cost.
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| Dakar, Senegal |
Not everyone is
happy about this, though. Inevitably, questions emerged regarding the
importance of the celebration over providing for the poor. One man, Massokhona
Kane, president of SOS Consommateurs, was particularly vehement on the subject.
He wrote a letter to the Mayor condemning the frivolous use of money that would
have been better used to “cure the ill, pay the teachers, feed the poor.”
Random Anna Thoughts:
While I understand that this was another plot to make Dakar an attractive
metropolis where people want to hold events and conferences, I believe there
are less expensive and more useful ways of doing so. A city where a man’s
desperation pushes him to burn himself in front of the presidential palace,
where child beggars are legion and where electricity is rarely a given cannot
allow itself to ‘shine,’ so to speak. Twenty minutes of fireworks was
unnecessary. They are a luxury for people who lack necessities. I quite enjoy
the idea of Dakar becoming a hub for tourism, commercial activities and
intellectual gatherings. I just cannot see it becoming that while so many
people are suffering and money is wasted on unhelpful celebrations which seem
to exclude a majority of the population.
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