Friday, March 29, 2024

Climate change impacting Africa, scientists look for solutions

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Isaac Kaledzi
Isaac Kaledzihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Kaledzi
Isaac Kaledzi is an experienced and award winning journalist from Ghana. He has worked for several media brands both in Ghana and on the International scene. Isaac Kaledzi is currently serving as an African Correspondent for DW.

On the farmland of Mohammed Amidu in Accra, Ghana he prepares his beds to plant vegetables. 40 years old and married with two children he has been farming for over 20 years now.

With proceeds from this vegetable farm he has been able to take care of his family, but it is becoming challenging in recent times for him to harvest enough due to lack of rainfall and unfavorable weather conditions.

When Africa Feeds visited his farm, Mohamed said that nowadays he is unable to harvest properly and sell his produce.

“Now if you plant around the dry season, you will suffer before harvesting, can you see the pepper, you can see that they are spoiling, now there is no market, if you call someone to come and buy, they will complain and I can’t challenge them and say come and take them to the market and sell. If you insist, some people will go and sell it and you won’t be able to get back your money.”

Mohammed is confronted with the negative impact of changes to the climate, which is a global crisis. Climate change and its impact has resulted in droughts, flooding and other environmental consequences in many African countries.

The livelihood of many families in this part of the world has been impacted negatively and governments are finding the best strategy to combat the effect of climate change.

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In West Africa a science services center is in operation to build capacities of countries in that region to tackle the issue.

Accra is home to the headquarters of a body called the West African Science services center on climate change and adapted land use also called as WASCAL.

Scientists from over 10 countries within the West African sub-region through this body continue to discuss new strategies towards finding solutions to the threats climate change possess to them.

Scientists discuss new ways of combating climate change at a meeting in Ghana’s capital Accra. Photo: Africa Feeds Media.

With the sole sponsorship of the German government worth over 50 million Euros the center established in 2012 is revising ways of making the impact of their work much felt.

The executive director of the center Professor Jimmy Adegoke said that his outfit has the task of finding ways to “combat climate change, and the other is to improve likelihood, we are doing that by training high level capacity and professionals and experts in the region through master and graduate level programs. We have very strong research programs conducted in partnership with universities in Germany, and lastly we deliver various kinds of products and services, water resources, weather services across the region.”

Member countries of this initiative are now thinking of a more sustainable means of funding the project going forward.

Although the German government is hoping to continue with funding it now wants West African governments to begin to take responsibility for the program.

The German Ambassador to Ghana, Christoph Retzlaff said “We consider WASCAL a success story crown jewel in our operation, and we want to continue our strong support for WASCAL, we think that WASCAL is really a very important institution here in the region to deal with the consequences of climate change, of course what we will like to also see is increased ownership in the region and that means that all the countries coming together, and working together in WASCAL so they can also pay membership fees.”

A concrete strategy would have to be adopted to sustain the work of WASCAL, both in the area of research and new ways of combating climate change as well as funding these programs.

As many African countries continues to reel under the impact of climate change, it has become clear that such a project is critical for many of them in order to access services from this center to help tackle the global crisis.

 

 

Source: Africafeeds.com/ Isaac Kaledzi

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