The Sovereign proposes the creation of a true African alliance against desertification, endowed with adequate financial and technological resources to fight against this phenomenon.
Desertification is far from being a chimera in Africa. About 4 million hectares of forests disappear each year on the continent, in particular because of mining and the collection of wood. That is an annual decrease of 3% of its GDP. A scourge which is one consequence of climate change which is taking on very worrying proportions in a continent already beset by a plethora of emergencies.
And, paradoxically, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Africa emits less than 7% of the planet’s greenhouse gases, a far cry from major powers like China which emits four times more GHGs than the 54 African countries combined. A climate change that is manifested by droughts and fires in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, and by floods in other countries.
This is probably one of the main reasons that led the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to choose Côte d’Ivoire to host the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) placed under the theme ” Lands. Life. Heritage: from a precarious world to a prosperous future”. This international meeting devoted to this theme started on May 9, 2022 in Abidjan and will continue until May 20. Nine heads of state are taking part, including Ghanaian President Addo Akufo-Addo, Nigerien Mohamed Bazoum, Congolese Felix Tshisekedi, Liberian George Weah and Nigerian Muhammadu Buhari.
In a speech addressed to the participants, King Mohammed VI proposes to African countries to coordinate their efforts to fight this common enemy. “We call for the establishment of a true African alliance against desertification, endowed with adequate financial and technological resources and suitable for effective action”, he proposes. According to the Sovereign, “the time has come to speed up the implementation of operational programs to combat desertification, within the framework of concrete, pragmatic and reinforced regional cooperation”.
While waiting for the creation of this alliance, Côte d’Ivoire is taking the lead. President Alassane Ouattara presented, at the opening of this event, the “Abidjan Initiative”, a major program which, according to him, aims to mobilize 1.5 billion dollars over five years to restore “the ecosystems degraded forests in Côte d’Ivoire” and promote “sustainable soil management approaches”.
Among the main donors, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the European Union. A timely program, since Côte d’Ivoire, one of the agricultural granaries of the continent and the world’s leading cocoa producer, has lost more than 92% of its primary forests in sixty years. A degradation of about 60% of arable land which has led to a major drop in agricultural productivity.
King Mohammed VI welcomes this initiative, which is “in line with the momentum given by the African Action Summit in favor of continental co-emergence that the kingdom organized in Marrakech on the sidelines of the COP 22”. Place to action. The emergency does not wait.