The African continent is experiencing unprecedented and severe consequences of extreme heat this year, from a three-year drought in the Horn of Africa and record-setting temperatures in the south. The following article was published in the March-April 2023 issue of NewsNotes.
In February, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) stated regarding the Horn of Africa: “Forecasts for the 2023 March-May rainy season point towards depressed rainfall and high temperatures.” This will constitute the sixth failed rainy season in the last three years and already millions of people in several countries are in famine conditions. Pastoralists in northern Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, and southern Ethiopia have lost over half of their herds. The conditions this year are worse than in 2011, when drought and famine led to 260,000 deaths in Somalia. ICPAC said that 23 million people in these countries are already highly food insecure, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that 1.3 million Somalians, 80 percent of them women and children, have been internally displaced by the drought. Over eight million, more than half of the country’s population, will need humanitarian aid this year.
At the same time, in January, a body of very warm, trapped air lingered over northern sectors of South Africa, from north-west to south-east parts of the country, resulting in a week in which temperatures were over forty degrees Centigrade (over 104 degrees Fahrenheit). As of late January, eight farmworkers had died, as well as a number of elderly people. Many people complained of difficulties sleeping. In the daytime, people could not escape the heat using air conditioning since South Africa is experiencing regular shortages of electricity – due to dry conditions among other factors. Farm animals have died from the heat, which also made it difficult for farmworkers to harvest crops, especially in the Province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, north and west of the city of Durban. Durban, a city of two million, had numerous calls for emergency treatment at hospitals due to heat exposure.
The South Africa Weather Service (SAWS) predicted that by this extreme heat would wane by February, but similar conditions would come back again. The Service gave advice to the population: avoid direct sunlight, drink lots of water, and taking time-outs from work in the hottest part of the day, especially if working outdoors. An article in Kenya’s Nation newspaper added that other parts of continental Africa are experiencing similar patterns of severe heat and drought, interspersed with epic downpours causing destructive flash floods, sometimes dumping a whole year’s worth of rainfall in one week.
In 2004, CSIR met in Johannesburg at a conference of climate experts to deliberate on patterns of climate extremes already discernible. They predicted “that ever-more-extreme weather events being recorded globally would become obvious by the year 2030.” Their predictions were wrong only in their timeline. Already in 2020, northern South Africa and Namibia, as well as Botswana, were recording average temperatures over two degrees Celsius, which is well beyond the recommended threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The latest report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its Africa section, stated: “Exposure and vulnerability to climate change in Africa are multi-dimensional, with socioeconomic, political, and environmental factors intersecting. Although Africa is one of the lowest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) causing climate change, yet key development sectors have already experienced widespread losses and damages attributable to human-induced climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives and reduced economic growth.”
The IPCC added: “Africa’s rapidly growing cities will be hotspots of risks from climate change and climate-induced in-migration, which could amplify pre-existing stresses related to poverty, informality, social and economic exclusion, and governance.”
Given these dire scenarios, one would have expected the Africa Union (AU) Summit, held in late February, to have diligently sought for non-GHG forms of economic development. But civil society organizations expressed skepticism that this would happen. While the AU Summit was taking place, Tanzania approved the $3.5 billin crude oil pipeline from northwestern Uganda through pristine areas of western and central Tanzania. The government of Mozambique continues to firm up private and public commitments to exploit the huge reserves of natural gas off its northeastern coastline. President William Ruto of Kenya proclaimed himself an environmental champion at the Summit, downplaying his government’s advancement of coal mining.
One of the civil society organizers at the AU Summit, Courtney Morgan of the African Climate Reality Project, said: “Decision makers and policy makers should be supporting sustainable solutions for a fossil-free Africa. The neocolonial gas projects on our continent will only exacerbate the climate crisis.”
Graphic a collage from image of Mike Erskine on Unsplash and African Map Vectors by Vecteezy