Africa's First Heat Officer Started With Shade Over the Market

Freetown appointed Eugenia Kargbo in 2021 as the first chief heat officer in Africa, a role created to give extreme heat an owner inside city government rather than leaving it split between health, planning and disaster response. Her first intervention was deliberately unspectacular: shade covers over three of the city's largest open-air street markets, sheltering around 2,300 women traders who had been working full days in direct sun. The covers keep the traders cooler and their produce saleable for longer — heat spoilage is a direct income loss for women trading on thin margins — and they carry solar panels that light the stalls after dark, extending trading hours. Kargbo has also been testing heat-reflective materials for the corrugated metal roofs that most of Freetown's informal settlements are built under, where indoor temperatures can exceed those outside.