Whole and lengthy stretches of coastlines in Africa and elsewhere are forecast to become singular urban areas in the future. We later learned that there is a great deal of work being done to work the coastline problem from Cape Town up the east coast through Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya. Then, on the northern coast, there is the stretch from Casablanca, Rabat, Tangiers to Algiers, and then the area from Alexandria, Egypt to the Nile Delta region just north of Cairo. On the Red Sea, Port Sudan is now becoming a major oil outlet for the pipeline coming from the interior, Asmara is growing, and the Djibouti port is as well. While everyone wants to see economic development in Africa, the problem from an environmental standpoint is that coastal zones are going to become very overcrowded, overdeveloped, and overexploited.
Pollution is the most important coastal problem.
According to Hinrichsen, there has been an overload of nutrients from untreated or partly treated sewage, agricultural runoff, and erosion. This is a problem for both the developed and the developing world, but the impacts on the developing world will be much more severe because their coastal regions will be threatened just as they are trying to develop and grow economically. The developing world is suffering more than the developed world because the developing world lacks the money, the institutional capability and expertise to manage their coastal resources effectively. Mangrove forests are especially productive. Seagrasses serve much the same purpose as mangroves, and they too are being threatened from coastal development.