Lomé


Lomé is the capital and largest city of Togo. It has an urban population of 837,437 while there were 2,188,376 permanent residents in its metropolitan area as of the 2022 census. Located on the Gulf of Guinea at the southwest corner of the country, with its entire western border along the easternmost edge of Ghana's Volta Region, Lomé is the country's administrative and industrial center, which includes an oil refinery. It is also the country's chief port, from where it exports coffee, cocoa, copra, and oil palm kernels.
Its city limits extends to the border with Ghana, located a few hundred meters west of the city center, to the Ghanaian city of Aflao and the South Ketu district where the city is situated, had 160,756 inhabitants in 2010. The cross-border agglomeration of which Lomé is the centre has about 2 million inhabitants as of 2020.

Etymology

The name 'Lomé' comes from Alomé or Alomé, which in the Ewe language, literally, means "in the alo trees", or "within the alo trees", to designate simply the forest of alo.

History

The city was founded by the Ewes and expanded in the 19th century by German, British and African traders, becoming the capital of Togoland in 1897. At the end of the 19th century, British customs duties on imported products weighed very heavily. The traders, mainly maritime Ewe or Anlo from the area between Aflao and Keta in the east of the British colony of Gold Coast, then looking for an alternative place to unload goods while being out of reach of British customs officers, naturally targeted the coastal site of Lomé, nearby. This commercial dynamic of customs circumvention and tax evasion then favored the expansion of Lomé around 1880. The calm and sparsely inhabited Loméen coastline began to be populated rapidly. The Ewes were soon joined by European, British and especially German companies, as well as itinerant merchants from the interior, such as the Hausa caravans from the cola roads. Many people were attracted by the new economic hub that Lomé represented. The rapid growth of the city was reinforced, and Lomé quickly earned a reputation as a place where good business was done.

Colonial period

It was the threats of the British present in the neighboring Gold Coast that put an end to the competition that Lomé provoked for their colony, which then provoked a call for the protection of Germany. Togoland was thus created as an entity of international law within the German colonial empire on 5 July 1884, by the Treaty of Togoville, signed by Gustav Nachtigal and King.
Lomé continued to prosper freely as a centre of import, thus becoming the main gateway to the North, whose major axis of penetration was then the Volta Valley; it was to access it that the construction of the first real road in the country, Lomé-Kpalimé, was undertaken from 1892. It was this major economic role that led the German administration to transfer the capital of the territory to a city that already had more than 2,000 inhabitants.
Lomé benefited from 1904 from a port that made it the only maritime contact point of Togo, ruining its rival, Aného, until then much more important. From this development, a network of railways could be deployed: to Aného in 1905, to Kpalimé in 1907 and to Atakpamé in 1909. All the "useful Togo" was now organized in a funnel around Lomé, whose preponderance on the Togolese urban network was definitively established and growth assured. The city reached a population of 8,000 in 1914. But, if the infrastructure set up by the Germans - which consisted of a post office in 1890, the telephone in 1894, the cathedral in 1904, a bank in 1906 and the intercontinental telegraph in 1913 - could benefit everyone, a system of discriminatory patents and licenses gradually ousted African traders from the most lucrative activities, that is the trade or import-export business.
Apart from the rich Octaviano Olympio, with his large Cocoterais, the first in the city, his herds, his brickyard and his construction company, most Togolese merchants had to put themselves at the service of foreign firms as managers of their agencies in other cities, or enjoying more autonomy as buyers of agricultural export products in the interior. The smallest had been hired in large numbers as clerks in the main factories. Firms in other African territories looked with envy at Togo, which had an abundant skilled workforce, while elsewhere, it was necessary to entrust all positions to expatriates, much more expensive for the employer.
The First World War completely spared the city. However, in 1916, it led to the eviction of German companies, gradually replaced by British and French firms. Many Togolese traders returned to Lomé. Their flourishing businesses, their vast coconut groves, and their large land holdings made them a bourgeoisie with which the new French colonial authorities had to reckon, prompting the creation of the council of notables in 1922, which gave Lomé a remarkably early political life in French-speaking Africa. It is also quite exceptional that an African capital has been so marked by its indigenous bourgeoisie, both in the production practices of urban space, so original in Lomé, and in the singularities of its popular architecture.
The French renewed the infrastructure left by the Germans, repairing railways, building more roads, constructing a new quay, etc. They added electrification in 1926 and drinking water supply in 1940. However, they took years to fill the void left in the schools by the German verbist missionaries when they left. The level of students enrolled in 1945, at the death of, reached that of 1914.
In the 1920s, a policy of systematic low taxation ushered in a long period of prosperity. In January 1923, a took place against the arrest of two Duawo leaders and forced their release.
Lomé reached 15,000 inhabitants around 1930. But the global economic crisis of the early 1930s led to a brutal recession. Many businesses closed or had to consolidate. Investments stopped, like the Northern Railway, definitively stopped in Blitta in 1934. A plan for a sharp tax increase, while the people's resources were falling, provoked the riots of January 1933, which were undoubtedly a major political break in the history of Togo. It was only after World War II, following a decade of postwar stagnation, that boom times resumed in Lomé.

Independence

The population of the city increased rapidly in the second half of the 20th century. It had only a population of 30,000 in 1950, which increased to 80,000 in 1960, the year when Togo became independent. A decade later, it stood at 200,000 people, in 1970. Within two decades, the population of Lomé increased by seven-fold. The city, as throughout the country, the very high prices of export products operate the markets, the significant investments of the colonial administration ensured full employment. The constructions were rapidly expanding at the expense of the old coconut groves, the hope animated each of an imminent take-off.
From the mid-1970s, investments became more and more gigantic, but not always in well-targeted areas, Togo, a small open country and hub of trade between its powerful neighbors, did not have the protected market that would have been needed for the large industries that were built for it, nor the stable tourism potential for the luxurious hotels that were coming up. At the same time, the railways were allowed to deteriorate, even though they had an important role, especially for serving the outlying districts of the city.
But, the economic activity of an African city is not just an accumulation of large companies, banks and factories. There is also the very vast field of the popular economy, these innumerable activities of production, exchange, service, repair, which are in fact the livelihood of the majority of the population, and the only way for it to access services commensurate with its modest resources. Difficult to grasp in the statistical tools of economists, the informal sector is increasingly affecting the real economic life of African city dwellers. In addition, the development of market gardening around the city, stimulated by growing unemployment, arose rural exodus and demand for vegetables. Market gardening, first extended to the north, is mainly on the beach, planting protective hedges. The various studies of the city's land market indicate that the neighborhoods are relatively heterogeneous, mixing opulent villas and modest housing, without social and spatial division of the city. This is explained by the fact that Lomeans are very attached to their plot of land and what they call their "home". This, therefore, led to a land freeze. However, if the city is not a socially divided city, the fact remains that Lomé is experiencing more and more problems related to the collection of household waste, the fight against urban insalubrity has become one of the priorities of the city and its inhabitants.

Climate

Owing to its location in the Dahomey Gap, Lomé has a tropical savanna climate despite its latitude close to the equator. The capital of Togo is relatively dry with an annual average rainfall of and on average 59 rainy days per year. Despite this, the city experiences heavy fog most of the year from the northern extension of the Benguela Current and receives a total of 2,330 bright sunshine hours annually. Comparably dry inland West African cities like Bamako or Kano expect between 2,900 and 3,000 hours of sunshine annually.
The annual mean temperature is about but heat is constant as monthly mean temperatures range from in July, the least hot month of the year to in February and in April, the hottest months of the year.

Climate change

A 2019 paper published in PLOS One estimated that under Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, a "moderate" scenario of climate change where global warming reaches ~ by 2100, the climate of Lomé in the year 2050 would most closely resemble the current climate of Managua in Nicaragua. The annual temperature would increase by, the temperature of the warmest month by, and of the coldest month by. According to Climate Action Tracker, the current warming trajectory appears consistent with, which closely matches RCP 4.5.
Moreover, according to the 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Lomé is one of 12 major African cities which would be the most severely affected by the future sea level rise. It estimates that they would collectively sustain cumulative damages of USD 65 billion under RCP 4.5 and USD 86.5 billion for the high-emission scenario RCP 8.5 by the year 2050. Additionally, RCP 8.5 combined with the hypothetical impact from marine ice sheet instability at high levels of warming would involve up to 137.5 billion USD in damages, while the additional accounting for the "low-probability, high-damage events" may increase aggregate risks to USD 187 billion for the "moderate" RCP4.5, USD 206 billion for RCP8.5 and USD 397 billion under the high-end ice sheet instability scenario. Since sea level rise would continue for about 10,000 years under every scenario of climate change, future costs of sea level rise would only increase, especially without adaptation measures.
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