Africa Developing new Tools to Build Resilience to Future Drought

Bennett Oghifo

The Africa Risk Capacity (ARC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) have said they will collaborate to support the development of financial tools to help Africa to adapt and become resilient to future drought and other extreme weather events.

Droughts have decimated communities and livelihoods in Africa for long, according to a statement by UNCCD. “This year alone, over 45 million people across Africa, mostly in Eastern and Southern Africa, are food insecure due to prolonged droughts.”

The partnership will support African countries in managing the impact of extreme weather events, including drought. It will also seek to leverage private sector resources through the development of new financial instruments that can provide insurance protection and other funding to mitigate these risks.

The announcement was marked by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary, and Mohamed Beavogui, ARC Director General, during a two-day technical workshop convened on 22 and 23 October in Bonn, Germany.

The workshop is reviewing the proposed principles and work of the eXtreme Climate Facility (XCF). XCF is a new financial vehicle aiming to tap into capital market resources to provide financial support to countries affected by extreme weather events.

Technical experts gathered at the workshop are exploring the robustness of the core elements of the XCF. These include the financial products and their underlying index, viable alternative market-based solutions and the partnerships that are essential to deliver both the product and the aims.

The process for the XCF began in March 2014 when the African Union Conference of Ministers of Finance requested the ARC, by decision no. 927(XLVII), at the Seventh AUECA Joint Annual Meetings in Abuja, Nigeria, to develop a financing mechanism to enhance Member States’ response to the impacts of increasing climate volatility.

The first Special Report on Climate Change and Land released just three months ago by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that droughts may increase in frequency and intensity in much of Africa.