The head of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Regional Office for Africa has partnered with the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development to ensure the rapid dissemination of weather updates from African meteorological experts to disaster managers in vulnerable communities.
ISDR asserts that the new parnership would potentially help millions of Africans at risk from hunger and malnutrition.
Pedro Basabe, the head of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Regional Office for Africa, announced yesterday that the UN’s partnership with the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development would potentially help millions of Africans at risk from hunger and malnutrition.
“The failure to mobilize an adequate and timely response to the food crisis on the Horn of Africa when the alarm was first raised 18 months ago has led to many unnecessary deaths.” -UN Head of ISDR Pedro Basabe
He notes that the scenario is in danger of repeating itself across the Sahel this year where more than one million children are at risk of severe malnutrition and 10 million people face hunger.
The Sahel has regularly been afflicted by food insecurity as drought, poor harvests and rising food prices have left the region on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.
Last year, the World Food Programm also implemented an emergency operation for 737,000 people, including acutely malnourished children, in parts of Chad, which has also been affected by the drought afflicting the eastern Sahel region.
In addition, the World Food Programme (WFP) had fed 670,000 children under the age of two and their families in drought-stricken Niger, where as many as eight million people need assistance.
Mr. Basabe expresses his hope that the new partnership between the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) and the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development will forge close links between the climate science community and disaster managers in Africa.
He adds that the partnership would seek to establish a better understanding of early warnings and a more rapid response at local, national, regional and international levels.
The partnership was announced today at a forum on disaster risk management in Nairobi.
ACMAD is other known as the Weather and Climate Centre with African continental competence. It was created in 1987 by the Conference of Ministers of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). It is composed of 53 Member States, the 53 countries of “Africa” continent.
