Tag: Africa

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Two Million Displaced by Drought in Horn of Africa

10 January 2023 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Over two million people have been uprooted in the Horn of Africa as the region suffers its worst drought for generations. 

UNICEF last month released the latest estimate of how many people have been internally displaced by the drought across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

Other bleak statistics released by the children’s aid agency are that over 20 million children are threatened by severe hunger, thirst and disease – up from 10 million in July. 

Nearly two million children in those three countries are thought to need urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition, which UNICEF says is the deadliest form of hunger. A further four million children are at risk of dropping out of school. 

This has been caused through a combination of the climate crisis, conflict, global inflation and grain shortages that continue to “devastate” the region, says UNICEF. 

“While collective and accelerated efforts have mitigated some of the worst impact of what had been feared, children in the Horn of Africa are still facing the most severe drought in more than two generations,” said Lieke van de Wiel, UNICEF deputy regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa. 

In a report published last month, the NASA Earth Observatory went further in saying that the Horn of Africa is experiencing the “longest and most severe drought on record”. 

To make matters even worse, UNICEF says the region is now facing an “unprecedented” fifth consecutive failed rainy season, with a poor outlook for the sixth as well. 

Last year, the International Organization for Migration launched a new project to provide emergency relief to those displaced by the crisis in Somalia. 

Elsewhere in Africa, including South Sudan and Nigeria, erratic weather conditions have led to devastating floods that have also resulted in mass displacement. 

The World Bank has previously predicted that there will be 85.7 million climate migrants in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. 

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Africa Getting a Fraction of the Finance it Needs to Fight Global Warming

17 August 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

A new report has revealed that Africa is receiving just 12% of the finance it needs to reduce emissions and adapt to global warming.

Africa needs an average of US$250 billion in climate finance annually from 2020-2030, according to a report released last week by Climate Policy Initiative, but received just US$29.5 billion in 2020.

The San Francisco-headquartered think tank says this falls “dramatically short” of what African countries need to implement their Nationally Determined Contributions, the commitments made by states in the Paris Agreement to cut emissions and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.

“Africa is the region that is both least responsible for the climate crisis and among the most vulnerable to its consequences,” says the report.

“It is crucial that sufficient capital is deployed in the continent to simultaneously support economic development, mitigate further environmental degradation, and help the population adapt and build resilience to the changing climate.”

The report says this will require significantly higher levels of investment, especially from the private sector. Due to “real and perceived risks” associated with investing in Africa, the private sector has so far played a “marginal role” in providing climate finance for the continent.

Africa currently accounts for just 3% of global emissions, despite housing almost a fifth of the world’s population according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation.

Global warming is already disproportionately affecting Africans, the IEA says, including through including water stress and increasingly frequent extreme weather events. These effects are in turn fuelling regional instability and mass migration.

A report last year by the World Meteorological Organization warned that Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly likely to suffer “climate conflicts” resulting from climate-induced political instability.