Stop looking at youths as a problem but a resource, young entrepreneurs tell AGRF

By Friday Phiri – Lusaka, Zambia

A panel of youth entrepreneurs at the AGRF in Lusaka

Africa is currently endowed with a large population of young people with 65 percent of the population being below the age of 35 and experts believe these figures present an enormous opportunity that, if leveraged, could turn around the continent's food fortunes and drive its economic growth.

With this background, young Agribusiness entrepreneurs attending the 2015 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), which opened in Lusaka on 29^th September have urged their governments to develop policies that favour youth’s participation in agricultural enterprises.

Women in Zambia’s Mukonchi community turn to seed-farming for livelihoods

By Friday Phiri

Members of Pache-Pache group

Africa’s potential to transform its economic fortunes through Agriculture is well documented.  Even amidst the challenges posed by climate change, experts believe Africa has the opportunity to develop using a green economic pathway. However, the question is how?

The women of Munkonchi, a manganese rich rural community in Zambia’s Mkushi district may be answering this question with an emphatic ‘Yes we can’.   

COP21 : La Côte d’Ivoire enfin prête pour Paris

Par Kanzly MIDEH

 

Après huit mois de concertations, de travail, de discussion, de recherche, de renforcement de capacité, de planification, et de validation, la Côte d’Ivoire a enfin terminé l’élaboration de son plan d’action climat, ses contributions prévues déterminée au niveau national (INDC) et les a soumises à la Convention Cadre des Nations Unies sur les Changements Climatiques (CCNUCC) le vendredi 11 Septembre 2015.

Climate Change, a threat to Sustaining CAADP Momentum in Agric transformation

 By Kofi Adu Domfeh

 From Maputo to Malabo, the NEPAD Agency’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) has shown the way to transform Africa’s agricultural sector.

  

For the past decade, CAADP has served as the continent’s policy framework for agricultural sector growth and economic development.

Africa to Soldier on with Demanding for Climate Justice Beyond Paris

By Ann Makena

As the impacts of climate change keep biting African countries, all eyes are on Paris, where parties meet later this year to unveil a new agreement that everybody hopes should be the pathway to saving the continent from the deadly phenomenon.

Public dialogues and campaigns across different stakeholder groups in Africa (such as civil society, youth groups), are generating deep reflections on what awaits the region, following a post Kyoto climate agreement in Paris later this year.

Women should be the Key Drivers of Renewable Energy in Africa

 By Ann Makena

Africa countries face enormous development challenges that are primary concern. Increasing energy production and enhancing access to electricity and off grid sources of energy is at core of these challenges and is an imperative looking at the energy crisis the continent now faces. Access to sustainable health for all energy for all with no impact on health, the environment and the household budget should become a universal right, provided that policies are designed and implemented.

Delegates prepare Afrca's roadmap to Paris COP 21

By Violet Nakamba

“THE promise of Paris” is the African Climate Talks (ACTs) theme- a critical inquiry into the issues, challenges and prospects of a post Kyoto climate framework for Africa.

Over 500 delegates from across the continent gathered for a three day intensive dialogue on Africa’s climate pathways.

The talks explored the possibilities of Africa prospering in a changing climate, how that prosperity can be leveraged and the roles of different countries in enabling this prosperity through their contributions to global climate governance.

Cocoa Eco Project targets carbon sequestration from farms in Ghana

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

 

Ghana’s Cocoa Eco-Project has a major outcome of increasing carbon sequestration by minimizing the emission of harmful gases on cocoa farms into the atmosphere.

Carbon sequestration involves the long term storage of carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change – it has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels.

PACJA warns against over optimism ahead of COP 21

By Friday Phiri in Dar-e-salaam

Mithika Mwenda of PACJA in Dar es Salaam

Ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties in December, the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has warned African delegates not to be over optimistic of a positive outcome.

Speaking to Journalists at the Africa Climate Talks in Dar-e-salaam, PACJA Secretary General, Mithika Mwenda cautioned that Africa should not be over expectant of a deal that answers all of its climate related challenges.

“We are quite skeptical because signals are not very good with a month to go before the COP. But it is our hope that whatever the outcome, the interests of Africa will be safeguarded to a certain extent”, Mwenda said.

Afrique orientale, Australe, les états de l’océan Indiens debout pour le succès de la COP 21

Par Diane NININAHAZWE

Les experts  sur le changement climatique en l’occurrence les professeurs d’universités, les représentants des gouvernements, la société civile, les représentants des jeunes  viennent de passer 3 jours à discuter  la position que devrait prendre les négociateurs Africains lors de la prochaine conférence sur le climat qui se tiendra  à Paris au Mois de décembre.

Common goal essential in negotiations- vice president tells delegates

Tanzanian VP Mohammed Gharib Bilal

VIOLET MENGO in Dar es Salaam

BARELY three months remaining to the Paris UN climate summit, Africa still has a number of challenges to address to galvanise itself and remain a force to reckon with at the negotiations.

And every effort is being made to ensure that the outcome of the meeting benefits Africans.

One way of ensuring that is the hosting of the Africa Climate Talks (ACTs) taking place in Dar es Salaam by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

The meeting is aimed at discussing the impacts and implications of climate change in Africa and the effective solutions.

Law Professor urges Africa to turn its vulnerability into a negotiating force at the COP

By Friday Phiri in Dar-e-salaam

Professor Oliver Ruppel at the forum

In the 1970s, Tanzania’s founding President, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere issued a thin booklet that he distributed to all his diplomats, titled, “Argue, Don’t shout,” in which he tried to show how disputation is more effective than name-calling and shouting, even when someone is becoming an irritant.

Close to five decades after this famous undertaking, a South Africa law Professor, Oliver Ruppel thinks Africa should adopt such a stance ahead of the crucial climate change conference--COP 21, slated for France later in December at which a new climate deal is to be reached.

Prof. Ruppel, who is Coordinating lead Author for Africa in the IPCC, says time has come for Africa to ‘argue’ by advancing solid arguments backed by available socio-economic evidence of its people’s suffering as a result of climate change and stop ‘lamenting’ its vulnerability, as the case has been over the years.

Africa urged to invest in low carbon economy

BY VIOLET MENGO in Dar es Salaam

A geothermal power plant in Kenya

ZAMBIA ClimDev Youth Forum climate champion Abel Musumali has advised African governments to invest in renewable energy while improving the continent’s early warning system and capacitating youth African scientists.

This is because 75 percent carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere comes from energy.

At a panel discussion on Climate science and climate policy linkages: what has worked for Africa and why? Musumali says achieving the 2°C limit as scientific evidence has indicated will require that global net emissions of greenhouse gases approach to zero by the second half of the century.

Climate change worsening existing vulnerabilities for developing countries, says Tanzanian Vice President Ready

By Friday Phiri in Dar-e-salaam

Charcoal ready for transportation

It is the development puzzle of the 21^st century and perhaps the hardest of choices facing humanity; tackling climate change, or ignore the realities of its negative effects threatening the very existence of humanity.

Unfortunately, developing countries, most of which are in Africa are said to be the most vulnerable despite their negligible contribution to global carbon emissions—the primary cause of climate change.

Kyoto Protocol Mistakes should be avoided during the Paris agreement

By Isaiah Esipisu

African climate experts, representatives from civil society and policy makers are meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to discuss the continent’s roadmap to the Paris climate change negotiations. They have warned that poor countries are headed for an anticlimax if past mistakes are repeated.

Keynote speaker Dr Mohammed Gharib Bilal, the Vice President of Tanzania, stated that “previous pledges to implementation of climate action have fallen short.”