CityLab Daily: Africa Gets Its First Heat Officer
Also today: Belly dancers and ancient mummies join Cairo’s revival, and how a Pittsburgh suburb landed a role in a “Bollywood Fantasy.”
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
Eugenia Kargbo became the first person in Africa to hold the title of chief heat officer in November when Freetown, Sierra Leone, tasked her with protecting the city's 1.2 million residents from extreme heat. In addition to raising public awareness, Kargbo is leading projects to plant a million trees and build urban gardens, as well as construct “cooling centers” with shade and water in the city’s slums. She’s among the first heat officers in the world, joining officials in Miami-Dade County, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Athens, Greece.
Kargbo faces an uphill battle. Experts believe Africa will likely feel the impacts of extreme heat more than any other continent, and its residents, many of whom depend on subsistence agriculture, are more acutely threatened by drought and flooding. In Freetown, overcrowding and poverty — and the fact that the city is surrounded by water on three sides — further complicate heat mitigation efforts, reports contributor Peter Yeung. Today on CityLab: Africa’s First Heat Officer Faces a Daunting Task
-Maxwell Adler