It is often said that Africa is the most vulnerable continent to the catastrophic impacts of climate change worldwide. These environmental consequences include severe floods and droughts which directly affect national economies, thereby lowering their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Agriculture continues to be the cornerstone of the economies of many African nations, ensuring food security and serving as the largest employer. Inaction over the impact of climate change by African governments will continue to witness the expansion of human movement to Europe and Asia.
Climate change will continue to have negative impacts on various fronts in African societies and change how they have been organising themselves from the way they did before. The beginning of 1990 brought distasteful experiences to African countries such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burundi, Sudan, and others. Disasters often feel distant when they don’t occur in our own countries, but the reality is that they can strike unexpectedly. The saddest truth is that these events not only devastate livelihoods but also claim innocent lives.
The continental spokes body, African Union (AU), has developed progressive policies to address the environmental crisis befalling the continent, such as the Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan (2022 – 2032). Individual African countries also adopted climate-change policies as a mechanism to address this global problem. The persistent challenge in many African governments is the failure to implement effective policies. Often, well-crafted policies remain neglected on the shelves while corruption, mismanagement, and malfeasance prevail.
African governments have tended to become reactionary forces waiting to respond only when they experience these natural crises. Individual African governments take no preventive measures to mitigate the gross impacts witnessed by thousands of people. African politicians are very much aware of what is coming, but they choose not to be prepared.
As natural disasters affect every sector from energy to food, health to environment, welfare, and education, they require a coordinated response by everyone, with the government taking the lead to ensure that early signs and warnings are identified, and measures to prevent severe harm are taken to reduce the consequences. There is a significant lack of collaboration between the public and private sectors, which should work closely to provide financial support. This partnership is essential for enabling weather officials to gather data, make predictions, and communicate timely information to the public, ensuring preparedness for upcoming weather conditions.
Countries in various regions ought to work together, because there is strong evidence showing that natural disasters know no boundaries. We’ve seen how recently the deadly floods affected Mozambique and South Africa. Again, in 2019, Cyclone Idai devastated Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, killing thousands of people across these countries and causing an estimated $2 billion in property damage.
These deadly and devastating natural crises seem to be ignored by African governments, which continue to be unprepared for future worst-scenario cases or tragedies. As these disasters respect no national boundaries, countries need to form regional bodies aimed at mitigating the effects of these kinds of natural disasters. When countries form regional bodies, it would be easier to pool financial resources, which would enable them to deal with future tragedies.
Unfortunately, Africa bears the greatest impact or consequences of climate change, while it does not contribute even five percent of the global greenhouse emissions. But climate change affects growing, developing economies. This poses a serious threat to water and food security, which has, in turn, been responsible for the migration of over 86 million young people from African countries to elsewhere, to look for greener pastures. There is often an outcry about the impact of slavery, but the ongoing African migration is bigger than all the previous forced human movements.
It is time for African countries to start walking the talk, improving the implementation of their climate-change policies, and ensuring that they safeguard their countries against the upcoming natural disasters. These disasters have already kept families apart due to climate-induced migration. The movement of the people (pulling and pushing factors) is no longer determined by wars; the natural disasters around Africa are responsible for the internal and external displacement of people around the continent. Every country has a role to play in ensuring that the continent is ready to prepare adequately for the undesired natural events.
Kgwadi is a political analyst and research fellow at the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI).
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The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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