African Climes

I n the month of August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the IPCC in short, released a report on climate change and land . The IPCC is the body whose scientific work guides policy around climate change.   In this report, scientists assessed a wide range of material concerning the interplays between land and climate change. In it, the IPCC starts by noting that only a quarter to a third of land’s potential net primary production is being utilized. It observes that ‘land provides the principal basis for human livelihoods and well-being including the supply of food, freshwater and multiple other ecosystem services, as well as supporting biodiversity’. Now, land is both a source of emissions where it releases greenhouse gases, as well as a sink, where it absorbs them. It is important to note that all aspects of the physical environment are interconnected. Land therefore plays a huge role in the exchange of energy, the hydrological, nitrogen and carbon cy...

Hi!☺ Glad you dropped by. Here’s today’s post. A griculture is the biggest contributor to Africa’s economy, a source of livelihood; employing over 50% of the continent’s labour force.  A lot of the more than one billion people that live in this our beloved continent rely on agriculture both directly and indirectly for a livelihood, to raise their children, to have a decent quality of life, for human dignity. A frica has 65% of the world’s arable land . Of this, only 2% is under irrigation while the potential stands at 25%. Also 66% of all land in Africa is arid and semi-arid.  It is also a fact that agriculture in Africa is largely rain fed and so dependent on the natural weather patterns which are now influenced by climate change. As a matter of fact, agriculture takes up 65% of Africa's labour force     and accounts for 32% of the continent’s overall GDP [i]   I n other words, we depend on agriculture not just for food, but for the ec...