COP26
How climate change is making Africa even poorer
The carcass of a dead elephant lies in the Hwange National Park. (Archive image) Photo: AP / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
In many parts of Africa, climate change is not just a theory: people are already struggling with the consequences – and for survival. Five of the ten countries most affected by climate change are in Africa.
The night her husband drowned in the floods has been etched into Malita Tembo’s memory. The family was woken up when the walls of their mud hut collapsed in the village of Nyachikadza in southern Malawi.
Outside, a storm lashed out, later called Idai and described by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as “one of the greatest weather-related disasters in the history of Africa”.
In March 2019, Idai destroyed the village and many other areas in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi within a few hours. The torrential rains and extreme winds with top speeds of 195 kilometers per hour caused damage amounting to 1.72 billion euros, according to the World Bank. Three million people were affected; more than 1000 died.
«A night filled with screams»
“It was one night filled with screams as one house after another fell,” recalls Tembo with tears. The government then allocated her a tent, a plot of land, two sacks of seeds and fertilizer – but that was not enough to start over. The 27-year-old mother of two small children struggles to survive every day. “We won’t come across a green branch,” she says.
According to the environmental organization Germanwatch, five of the ten countries most affected by climate change are in Africa. The South African Mozambique is therefore the worst hit country in the world; followed by neighboring Zimbabwe. Mozambique’s northern neighbor Malawi, Niger in West Africa and South Sudan on the eastern Horn of Africa are also among the top ten.
No funds for civil protection and reconstruction
For poor countries, the effects of climate change are particularly fatal, as governments lack the financial means for disaster control and reconstruction. Often entire regions lie fallow for many months – if not years. Important economic sectors such as agriculture as well as water and electricity supply are interrupted. Diseases are spreading, and damaged harvests mean hunger in the long term.
It was the same for Francisco João Amade, who in Mozambique’s northern Macomia district first lost his belongings due to cyclone Idai. A few weeks later came the second stroke of fate: Cyclone Kenneth literally swept the roof over Amade’s head. Kenneth wreaked havoc in parts of Tanzania and on the Comoros archipelago at 200 kilometers an hour and floods 2.5 meters high.
The African continent is warming up faster
Since then, Amade has lived with his wife, three children and a few relatives in a confined space in a small hut that he made makeshift nailed together from debris. The 29-year-old smallholder has planted a few banana trees and sugar cane. With the income he can only buy a few sacks of rice, oil and soap for his family. It is not enough for more.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 118 million people in Africa will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat by 2030. The continent is warming more and faster than the global average – even though Africa’s 54 countries produce less than four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Politicians raise the alarm at world climate summit
The combination of climate change and the corona pandemic has already brought impoverished Malawi to its knees, President Lazarus Chakwera recently warned in the run-up to the ongoing UN climate conference COP26 in Glasgow. “We urgently need to invest in adaptation measures,” said Chakwere to the state television broadcaster MBC. For the financing of the projects he looks to the west.
In Zimbabwe, too, which has been in a deep economic crisis for many years, the government is not complying with the destruction. “If climate change continues at the current rate, thousands of Zimbabweans will lose their jobs, their homes or even their lives,” warned President Emmerson Mngangagwa on Twitter.
Cyclone Idai was followed this year by tropical cyclones Eloise and Chalane. Many Zimbabweans have already had to flee several times.
Hundreds of thousands have been hit by droughts and floods
Zimbabwean Enita Mauraye has been living in a tent city built by the Red Cross with no running water or electricity near the eastern town of Chimanimani for two years. Their five-year-old daughter was swept away by the floods of Idai. Instead of going to school, the three surviving sons try to help their mother with auxiliary jobs. The government promised to build new houses, but the promise remained, says the 52-year-old. She hardly dares to cherish hope for a better future.
Further north, the desert state of Niger suffers from alternating droughts and floods. When the Niger River overflowed its banks at a rapid pace a few weeks ago, more than 210,000 people – half of them children – were affected. Farmer Abdou Aziz Soumana lost his entire rice harvest in the village of Kiskisoye, not far from the capital Niamey. “We have absolutely no idea how to survive,” says the 54-year-old father of eight children in despair. The weather changes are catastrophic, yields have been falling for years, says Soumana: “We haven’t believed in climate change for a long time, but now we really think that it exists.”