Africa's perpetual challenge

12 December 2022
L'Express (Port Louis)
By Nad Sivaramen

The USA-Africa Summit is mostly based on the recognition that "Africa will shape the future not just of the African people, but of the world." This is the official US perspective.

African leaders, for their part, will go to Washington, DC, with one central message : climate change is real and progressing more quickly than expected. Sea levels are rising, and weather patterns are becoming warmer and more unpredictable. Africa takes climate change most seriously because the continent is located in what climatologists have labelled as a "zone of vulnerability," where even small increases in temperature yield large changes in humidity, rain patterns, and soil quality. Additionally, Africa has not benefited from many of the technological advances that have allowed the US to cope with climate change, such as water storage facilities, irrigation systems, and efficient supply chains that deliver food to agriculturally unproductive areas.

In general, Africa is more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than other regions of the world, and Africa's poorest citizens are the most at risk. African leaders are aware that they need to craft strategies and policies to prepare their societies for the food, water, and infrastructure challenges that are predicted to occur over the coming decades.

However, the precise role that climate change plays in provoking security risks in Africa is still subject to some debate. While some argue that there is no direct scientific evidence linking climate change to conflict, many posit that climate change has the potential to exacerbate local tensions and combine with other political factors to result in conflict. In addition to local-level tensions and conflict, climate change is depleting shared water resources along borders on the continent and has the potential to create tension between countries. A reminder of Mark Twain's phrase, "Whiskey is for drinking, but water is for fighting."

African civil societies have a lot to voice out. The democratic gains of yesteryears and positive human development trends - mainly in terms of income, health and education - have been reversed due to increased competition over diminishing resources, Covid -19 and corruption. Therefore, environmental challenges such as severe droughts, land degradation, and air pollution will amplify income disparities on a continent where some 80 percent of the poor have no access to proper sanitation.

The combination of social inequalities and environmental degradation (with its serious consequences for food availability, water levels, and the displacement of people) is likely to be a major threat to stability in Africa. As underlined during COP 27, climate change remains a perpetual challenge that can only be managed, not solved...

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