The continent of Africa is more than large enough to hold three USAs, including Hawaii and Alaska. With its 54 countries, it trails only Asia in area and population. Though people living in Africa have contributed little to the problem, in every scenario with more than 1.5°C warming, their continent is the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Yet these effects remain seriously underreported in English-language Western news. Google Africa climate change or Africa climate action and nearly every link will be to an institution of some sort (U.N., WMO, IMF, Brookings, USAID, IPCC, and so on) rather than to a newspaper or magazine article. That is true for pieces about weather and climate, humanitarian crises, and stories about Africans leading on climate solutions.
Such stories do exist, though, and here is a sampler.
The big picture:
- How Africa will be affected by climate change (Richard Washington, BBC)
Cyclones on the east coast:
- Global warming drove a deadly burst of Indian Ocean Tropical Storms (Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News)
- 2023 cyclones in the Indian Ocean (NASA)
- Cyclone Freddy death toll in southeast Africa surpasses 500 (Al-Jazeera)
Drought and famine in the Horn of Africa:
- Historic famine looms as drought grips East Africa (Jake Bittle, Grist)
- Climate change is driving millions to the precipice of a ‘raging food catastrophe’ (Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News)
- Zimbabwe moves 2,500 wild animals due to climate change (Farai Mutsaka, AP)
West Africa:
- West Africa’s deadly rainfall in 2022 made ’80 times more likely’ by climate change (Ayesha Tandon, Carbon Brief)
Water woes in North Africa:
- Climate change threatens centuries-old oases in Morocco
- ‘No other alternative’: Egypt worries as climate change, dam project threaten Nile water supply (Mosa’ab Elshamy, Associated Press)
- ‘Dangerous’ Tunisian droughts threaten food security (Tarek Amara and Jihed Abidellaoui, Reuters)
News site and podcast, focus on East Africa:
- Africa Climate Conversations (Sophie Mbugua)
- Africa Climate News
Explorations of climate solutions:
- My Continent Is Not Your Giant Climate Laboratory (Chukwumerije Okereke, New York Times)
- Why keep Africa’s dryland forests alive? (Sophie Mbugua, Mongabay)
- ‘It all hinges on the herders’: world’s largest soil carbon removal project enlists Kenyan pastoralists (Peter Muiruri, The Guardian)
- In Tanzania, carbon offsets preserve forests and a way of life (Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360)
- How Kenya became the world’s geothermal powerhouse (Eric Krebs, Reasons to Be Cheerful)
- Africa’s ‘Great Green Wall’ could have far-reaching climate effects (Carolyn Gramling, Science News)
- Quitting Coal: What South Africa Shows Us (Manuela Andreoni, New York Times)