Re: Africa at the Climate Summit

My attention was drawn to the aforesaid gripping back page column written by Mr. Tunde Asaju and published on 2 November, 2021, in which he had shed more light on the ongoing COP26 UN Climate Change Summit at Glasgow and the gravest delinquency of the Global South’s leaders on combating the life-threatening sweeping consequences of […]

My attention was drawn to the aforesaid gripping back page column written by Mr. Tunde Asaju and published on 2 November, 2021, in which he had shed more light on the ongoing COP26 UN Climate Change Summit at Glasgow and the gravest delinquency of the Global South’s leaders on combating the life-threatening sweeping consequences of climate change.    

To begin with, I absolutely concur with the columnist’s view that the Global South’s leaders should not pretend to be committed parties to applying themselves to combating global warming earnestly when the majority of their impoverished citizens and rural communities are currently decimating their continent’s most pristine spellbinding forests for domestic fuels and illegal charcoal exporting.

When African leaders are now substantiating their annual reports of climate change’s achievements in their continent with provable facts to the ongoing climate change conference at Glasgow, but if one traverse across the continent, he will definitely witness men inside our immaculate mesmerizing forests decimating trees that purify our climates and play a key role in mitigating global warming since they absorb dioxide (CO2). These trees are burned to make charcoal and sell them to illegal charcoal traders here and abroad. So, what sorts of effort African leaders are making to halt and bring alternative to this incessant hazardous wide-ranging deforestation?

According to the European Space Agency, 25 to 35 per cent of climate-changing greenhouse gases come from biomass burning that mostly occurs in the African continent. Some activists have also pointed out that tree-planting may not be an ultimate solution for vehement fight against desertification and climate change in Africa unless authorities of the continent provide cheapest alternative energy sources or fuels to the pernicious firewood, kerosene and charcoal for the poorest people of the continent.

Nigeria is indeed endowed with a number of neglected hydropower projects potential for hydroelectric power generation across the country that are regarded as major sources of renewable energy. These cardinal abandoned hydropower dams includes  Kafin-Zaki dam, Mambilla dam, Jebba dam, Kiri dam, Oyan River dam, Ikere Gorge dam, Shiroro dam, Dadin-kowa dam, Tiga dam, Challawa Gorge dam, Goronyo dam, Zobe dam, Jebi dam, Obudu dam, Guau dam, Jibiya dam, Bakolori dam, Omi-Kampe dam, to name but a few. When completed, these overlooked multipurpose hydroelectric dams will definitely invigorate Nigeria’s electricity and galvanise rural communities to migrate from firewood to this much-need cleanest energy sources.

The objectives of the Great Green Wall initiative (GGW) designed to create 10 million jobs and restore 153 million hectares of degraded land across Africa by 2030 seem to be incapable of yielding the desired effects. Nigeria should accelerate the projects of its National Agency of the Great Green Wall (NAGGW) in affected eleven states of the northern country that includes Adamawa, Borno, Kano, Jigawa, Gombe, Bauchi, Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto and Yobe.

Mustapha Baba Azare writes from  Bauchi State