Briefed about the warnings issued by World Food Program director David Beasley, Transaqua author Marcello Vichi of Bonifica said that the horrendous situation in the Sahel described by Beasley “is not a new situation. We had forecast this 30 years ago, when the disaster began.” When Beasley describes famine and war-dictated mass migrations and starvation, and calls for both relief measures and infrastructure development, he is providing arguments for Transaqua, the one infrastructure project that could change the situation not only in the Lake Chad Basin, but in the entire Sahel region, providing water, electricity and between 5 and 7 million hectares of farmland.
Whereas countries in the region, led by Nigeria, are pushing for Transaqua, opposition has been fed by former European colonialist powers which still have political control over some governments in the region. Notably, the government of Canada, on behalf of the British Commonwealth and of French government institutions, has recently funded a paper that claims that Transaqua is an imperialist scheme pushed by the government of Italy, China and the Schiller Institute.
(Such a paper was competently rebutted by the following blog “Green Power, Political Pessimism and Opposition to the Development of the African Interior with Transaqua” http://africanagenda.net/green-power-political-pessimism-and-opposition-to-the-development-of-the-african-interior-with-transaqua/)
Had Transaqua been adopted when it was proposed, we would not have famine and wars in the Sahel today. The forces and governments that oppose Transaqua have millions of deaths by starvation on their consciousness today.
