African Climes

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...

I saw a tweet the other day, which led to an article about how climate change induced shrinkage of Lake Chad has worsened the humanitarian crisis in the area.   T oday’s post is about climate change and security. In what ways does climate change interact with security issues? What are the security impacts of a sustained change in otherwise normal weather conditions?  C limate change has been said to be a threat multiplier. A threat multiplier is something that amplifies or makes a certain threat worse. It makes an already bad situation worse. It can act as a catalyst. E xtreme weather events worsen life conditions because they directly destroy livelihoods, property, and infrastructure. They negatively affect basic human needs. In  Puerto Rico power was knocked out in the entire country by Hurricane Maria. So much loss and destruction was occasioned by the hurricane that Puerto Rico has to build everything from scratch. This will  require a lot of re...

Well, hello there fresh and young! Got a question for you. What’s your skin care routine like? Er, the first question actually should be, do you have a skin care routine? Did you know, we all take care of our skin? Yes you do. Whether it is splashing some soapy water on your face to clear the dirt and sweat or spending hours in spas, online beauty forums and money in countless purchases of that ‘miracle product’, we all care about how we look to some extent, whether it is 1% or 100%. Well regardless of those who find it impossible to leave the house without at least ten products on their face and those who deem it vain, and feeding consumerism, skin care is important and why? Because the skin is the largest organ in the body, covering your entire flesh and also acting as the first barrier against harmful external elements such as ultra violet solar radiation, chemicals, pollutants, bacteria and  other harmful disease causing organisms. The skin, alongside c...

N ow let’s turn the tide a bit, talk about how #ActOnClimate makes business sense for us. Embed from Getty Images T he other very important way in which the low carbon pathway makes business sense is the very altruistic reason of human and animal/ plant health. Fossil fuels right from when they are being mined right up the chain to the level when they are combusted or used, are harmful to the health of the inhabitants of planet Earth. F or example, burning coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, can cause neurological damage, heart failure, cancer and respiratory problems in humans just to name a few. This occurs as result of contact with dioxins and furans (harmful chemical compounds), heavy metals as well as fly and bottom ash. If these harmful by products leached into the soil and neighboring water sources, then we are certainly a doomed lot, one for the direct effects and two because we ware feeding the very thing that devours us. A nd we all know, if we want to have mon...