7 ABANDONED WONDERS OF MODERN AFRICA

Mansions to Mines: 7 Abandoned Wonders of Modern Africa
By Steph, Web Urbanist, 24 July 2013.

Ranging from eerie, remote desert settlements in the hottest place on earth to perfectly pastel modern ghost towns, Africa’s standout abandonments are as diverse and fascinating as the continent itself. A Star Wars set is slowly swallowed by the sand in Tunisia, skeletons of ships serve as warnings to sailors on the coast of South Africa, and a vast Chinese-built housing development waits for half a million new residents in Angola.

1. Tattooine: Abandoned Star Wars Set, Tunisia

Images via: fastco

Left to dry out in the blazing desert sun for over 35 years, the Lars Homestead set from Star Wars Episode IV was recently rediscovered by New York-based photographer Rä di Martino. An area of Tunisia near the oasis city of Tozeur has been used as a dramatic backdrop for many films, including Raiders of the Lost Ark and The English Patient. In addition to Luke Skywalker’s childhood home, di Martino found several other Star Wars sets, documented in a series she calls Every World’s a Stage.

Tunisia was used as a location for scenes in every Star Wars movie except Episode V, including Ben Kenobi’s hut, Grand Dune where R2-D2 and C-3PO crash in Episode IV, the Slave Quarters Row and the canyon where Luke meets Ben. Pictures taken by fans who make pilgrimages to the set have revealed that, in time, it will be swallowed up by the desert sands.

2. Abandoned Mining Town of Kolmanskop, Namibia

Images via: wikimedia commons, geoftheref, coda

The sands have already claimed one abandoned village in Namibia. Kolmanskop was once a bustling mining village filled with German diamond miners who built mansions in the style of their home country. It had a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, theatre, sport hall, casino, the first x-ray station in the Southern Hemisphere and the first tram in Africa.

But after World War I, the diamonds were gone, and the miners began to leave. Kolmanskop was abandoned altogether by 1954, and since then, winds have swept knee-high drifts of sand into the open doors and windows of the architecture left behind. Some homes are almost entirely buried. The ghost town is now a popular tourist destination. [More information here and here]

3. Empty Chinese-Built Housing Development of Kilamba, Angola

Images via: angola non-profit

The modern ghost town of Kilamba isn’t something you’d expect to find in Angola - indeed, it’s highly reminiscent of China’s ghost town of Ordos City. That’s because it was built by the China International Trust and Investment Corporation, financed by a Chinese credit line and repaid by the Angolan government with oil. The series of 750 eight-story apartment blocks, along with over 100 commercial complexes and a dozen schools, was designed to accommodate half a million people, but only a few hundred apartments were sold in the initial opening period, leaving the vast development empty for many months. Angola doesn’t have a large enough middle class to afford homes like this.

But as of summer 2013, the apartments are slowly filling up thanks to government subsidies lowering the price of each unit by nearly half. Like Ordos, it may be a challenge to get Kilamba up and running as the model for emerging economies that it was intended to be, but maybe its ghost town days are numbered.

4. Ships and Machinery on the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

Images via: dillon marsh

Remains of shipwrecks and rusted machinery stretch out on the rocks of South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope like the carcasses of extinct beasts. Casualties of the extreme weather that gave the area the nickname Cape of Storms, these abandonments have been left to deteriorate as a reminder to sailors of just how perilous the waters can be. While the intersection of cold swells from Antarctica and a warm current of the Indian Ocean is responsible for most of the danger, the former lighthouse - which wasn’t quite tall enough to be of much use - certainly didn’t help. A 5,500-ton Portuguese ship called the Lusitania is among those to have wrecked here. The Cape is also the setting for the myth of The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever. [More information here and here]

5. Grand-Bassam Ghost Town, Côte d’Ivoire

Images via: y-voir, wikimedia commons

Once the French colonial capital city, Grand-Bassam remained a key seaport of Côte d’Ivoire until the ’30s. But as commercial shipping in the area declined, so did the population. At the time of the nation’s independence in 1960, even more residents left as remaining administrative offices were transferred elsewhere.

For decades, Grand-Bassam was only inhabited by squatters - but the allure of French colonial ruins in an exotic seaside setting began to bring in foreign tourists in the 1970s. Sensing an opportunity, native Ivoirians began to move back to cater to the emerging industry. Today, just 5,000 people live in the town, and some areas remain abandoned. The crumbling ruins, some sprouting palm trees from their roofs, continue to be a draw for visitors.

6. Dallol Mining Town in a Crater, Ethiopia

Images via: photo volcanic

Just off the salt flats of northern Ethiopia is the hottest and most remote town in the world. It’s also, unsurprisingly, abandoned. A railway was built to transport salt from the tiny Dallol settlement to a port in 1918, and potash production reached 50,000 metric tons. But larger-scale supplies became available in Germany, the USSR and the United States after World War I, devastating the industry; after World War II, the railway was dismantled. The only regular transport service to access Dallol is provided by camel caravans, which travel there to collect salt. Some buildings, made of salt blocks, still stand.

Located near a dormant volcano of the same name, Dallol holds the record for the high average temperature of an inhabited location on Earth at 96 degrees. The record low is just 80 degrees.

7. Rhodes Zoo, Cape Town, South Africa

Images via: partizanpublik.nl, mallix

Designed by and named for the 19th century British colonialist and founder of the De Beers diamond company Cecil Rhodes, the Rhodes Zoo of Cape Town, South Africa was built in the 1890s. After it was shut down in the ’70s, it was left to be reclaimed by nature and vandals. Its Victorian structures are scrawled with graffiti, its mosaics are crumbling, its animal enclosures are rusting and falling down. And yet these ruins are still a place of beauty, set against the mountains with an eerie low-lying fog rolling in to give it a ghostly feel.

[Source: Web Urbanist. Edited. Some links added.]

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