Elderly woman rescued from her home in northern Kenya and taken to safety on a donkey cart.
A new UN report estimates that losses from severe droughts in Africa over the past 50 years due to climate change have exceeded $70 billion, putting around 23 million people at the risk of food insecurity across the horn of Africa.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD) report ‘The Global Drought Snapshot’ and published last December found that at the end of 2022, the horn of Africa had experienced the worst drought in 40 years, with Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia particularly hard hit.
Five consecutive seasons of failed rains wreaked havoc over large parts of East Africa and contributed to reduced agricultural productivity and high food prices.
Floods have also had devastating effects on the continent. The global Action Against Hunger organisation echoed similar concerns, indicating last November that nearly 1.6 million people throughout the horn of Africa were displaced by severe climate-induced floods.
After years of drought left soils unable to absorb moisture, severe floods have killed dozens of people and continues to wipe out entire villages; displacing 746,000 in Somalia, more than 396,000 in Ethiopia and 450,000 in Kenya, according to the organisation.
Authors of the UNCCD report highlight land restoration, sustainable land management and nature-positive agricultural practices as critical aspects of building global drought resilience.
They argue that up to 25% of CO2 emissions could be offset by nature-based solutions, including land restoration.Replacing drip irrigation with conventional sprinkler systems, for instance, would reduce 20% to 50% in water waste.The authors add that there would be almost a 100% reduction in the conversion of global forests and natural land for agriculture if just half of animal products consumed today were replaced with more sustainable alternatives.
“A holistic, integrated and coordinated approach to disaster risk reduction and enhancing the resilience of communities and ecosystems are needed,” says Daniel Tsegai, UNCCD drought expert and lead author of the report.
Families in Hudur, Somalia, moving their possessions to higher ground. Credit: Action Against Hunger
According to a study published in npj Climate Action last August, developing countries suffer from the lack of, or biased, climate data fed into AI tools. “The consequence of biased climate data is that it will provide inaccurate predictions of extreme weather events,”says Ramit Debnath, assistant professor of computational science at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the report.
The experts suggest the formation of new data start-ups that would help bridge the data gap by collecting and curating local and context driven datasets from Sub-Saharan Africa.But such start-ups would need appropriate infrastructure to be able to collect the data.
A study published in Nature last August found that weather monitoring systems and technologies across Africa were “missing, outmoded or malfunctioning,” leaving African populations even more exposed to climate change.
Africa had just 37 radar stations, compared to 636 for US and Europe combined, despite having a larger population size and landmass, the report says.
Obed Ogega, climate scientist and programme officer at African Academy of Sciences in Nairobi, says producing knowledge that is accurate, locally relevant, and timely can help build adaptive capacity and resilience of communities, systems and infrastructure.
“Most importantly, researchers should work with policy makers and communities not just to ensure alignment of the research to local needs and priorities but also to facilitate consumption and use of the information generated,” Ogega says.
Nancy Githaiga, African Wildlife Foundation’s Kenya country director, says investing in prevention is among the most cost-effective measures countries can take to manage water scarcity, with returns up to 10 times on investment.
“Investments in water of $1 gives $4 to $12 in returns, according to WHO estimates, through increased productivity and reduced health costs,” Githaiga says.
