Senegalese singer-songwriter Baaba Maal was named a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification on Monday.
Maal has long been a climate change and refugee activist. He has been committed to various development challenges in Africa since 2003, working with various United Nations family organizations.
His NANN-K Trust recently launched a solar-powered irrigation project in Senegal to combat desertification, which is one of the primary reasons people leave the country on perilous migration routes. The project will train participants to launch similar initiatives in their own communities.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Maal stated that he believes in empowering young people and women.
“We are dealing with the effects of climate change, but we are also fighting desertification on the African continent, particularly in my region, where we are not far from the desert and see it approaching,” he said.
“And it had an impact because people who don’t get more opportunities to do agriculture, fishing, and many other things will have to flee their homes, go to big cities where nothing is planned for them, and then later on, some of the young people will just take the boats to go to Spain or some of these places.”
or simply attempt to cross the desert, which is extremely dangerous. We did lose a lot of people.”
Maal was born into a fisherman caste and was expected to follow that career path in the small town of Podor in north Senegal, but he befriended storyteller and musician Mansour Seck and has spent his life performing, traveling, and raising awareness about the issues his homeland faces.
“Our role is first to inform people about what’s going on because sometimes locals don’t realize what’s happening to them as a result of climate change.” They don’t know how to respond to that. But, once they know about it, they will tell you what to do,” he said.
On March 31, the veteran musician released his first album in seven years, “Being,” and on May 30 he will headline the Barbican in London for the first time in 20 years.
