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IDENAU, Cameroon — It’s 9 p.m. and fish trader Mammy Joan Dione, 58, is working hard with her two daughters to dry a day’s catch of fish. Business in this renowned Central African fishing port is on the uptick thanks to the recent installation of solar-powered ovens to dry the fish, preventing what used to be massive spoilage from a lack of energy for preservation. “We can now dry our fish even in the night with the use of solar ovens,” says Dione, whose business is driven by customers from big cities in Cameroon and neighbouring Nigeria and Gabon. “We now work day and night to meet the high demand and this has significantly increased our family income. We can also preserve fresh fish in refrigerators thanks to the availability of electricity,” she adds. With the aid of fans installed inside the dryer, the heat is evenly circulated, making it possible to dry over 400 kilograms of fish in about six hours — a fraction of the time used in the past for smoking. Some ten fishing groups in Idenau and nearby Batoke in this coastal region were offered two solar energy fish-drying ovens each in February 2015 by the Cameroon contingent of the African Resource Group (ARG-CAM) working in collaboration with the Limbe city council — part of a wider drive to expand renewables like solar across the country. What is happening here, legislators promise, is just the beginning.Joan Dione’s daughter Sharon Dione, 23, quickly switches on the lights in the store room where they have stocked over 25 baskets of dried fish ready for market. In the past, drying such a significant quantity of fish in a day was impossible. They instead relied on smoking the fish with wood from a nearby mangrove forest, which limited their production to less than five baskets a day. “The process of using wood energy was so difficult, emitting smoke that was dangerous to our health,” says Sharon Dione. “The arrival of solar energy and solar drying ovens here has changed everything.” The need to boost renewables in CameroonCameroon is endowed with an abundance of oil, gas and hydropower, but, in 2013, only 18 per cent of the over 22 million population had access to a reliable energy source, a rate experts said is low for Africa. Yet the country has abundant sunshine and a lot of wind in the northern and western regions, which holds great potential for solar energy and wind turbines. More than 80 per cent of the country’s electricity comes from hydropower, but the government is also encouraging the use of other renewable sources, with solar energy gaining ground. Cameroon will increasingly rely on renewable energy as it moves toward its goal of “economic emergence” by 2035, the government announced in May 2015.And the country will need the electricity. As with much of Africa (according to the International Energy Agency), a shift is well underway from a previously rural society to modern urban settlements. More people will be…
By Isaiah EsipisuDAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (PAMACC News) - Government representatives from Africa, civil society organisations and experts in the water sectors are meeting in Dar Es Salaam to draw a roadmap through which leaders will make commitments at the highest level towards achieving a universal and equitable access to water and sanitation for all.The event, dubbed Sixth Africa Water Week (AWW) and convened by the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) in conjunction with the African Union Commission brings together over 1000 participants from 100 different African countries.“In order for Africa to have a universal access to water, then we need goodwill from both governments, and the people,” said H. E. Mwai Kibaki, the immediate former president for Kenya and the UNESCO Special Envoy for Water in Africa. Bai Mass Taal, the AMCOW Executive Secretary assured government representatives that his organisation was committed to improving stakeholder’s awareness of the implementable actions for achieving the set targets and actions.He said that the organisation is also committed to strengthening corporations across countries with shared water resources and building stronger partnership for the implementation of the AMCOW Work Plan and the N’gor Declaration on Water Security and Sanitation.“It is AMCOW's belief that the current funding landscape for the water sector is grossly insufficient to meet the financial deficit and, most importantly, achieve the Sustainable Development Goal number 6,” said Taal.This, he continued, calls for innovative approaches for financing water and sanitation infrastructure taking into consideration the huge challenge facing Africa in the mobilisation of financial resources to achieve the SDG 6 target of ensuring that everyone has access to potable water and sanitation.Her Excellency Rhoda P. Tumusiime, the Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union Commission called for a consensus on a common message from the deliberations in Tanzania.“In the spirit of AMCOW’s mandate to promote cooperation, it is important that a key outcome of our deliberations in Dar es Salaam should be consensus on an a single message that will be carried by our Ministers responsible for Water Affairs in Africa to the political leadership of their individual Member States to support the wholesome integration,” she told the conference in a message read on her behalf.“This should be a minimum standard for Africa – of the targets of the Africa Water Vision 2025 and the related African political commitments for achieving water and sanitation goals in Africa into the monitoring framework for the SDGs,” added Tumusiime.
By Isaiah EsipisuDAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (PAMACC News) – Use of mobile telephone technologies and community radio services has been cited as some of the best methods of sharing and disseminating climate information for effective early warning, and adaptation.Experts attending the sixth session of the Africa Water Week (AWW) in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania have pointed out that early warning systems can be set up to avoid or reduce the impact of hazards such as floods, landslides, storms, and forest fires. However, the significance of an effective system lies in the recognition of its benefits by local people.According to Dr Abdourahman H-Gaba Maki, of the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), early warning system is a major element of disaster risk reduction, and helps in preventing loss of life and properties. “This also ensures there is a constant state of preparedness,” he told the AWW.To make the system effective and relevant to the people, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has developed a mobile telephone application (app) known as “IGAD-ASIGN”, through which mobile phone owners have an opportunity to contribute towards disaster preparedness by taking and sending photos of given geographical situation, in relation to an impending, or a particular disaster.“The IGAD-ASIGN is an important smart-phone application because it facilitates interaction and feedback from the ground,” said Maki.The photos taken by volunteers are used as field validation of IGAD and other partners’ satellite image analyses, thus contributing to accurate and efficient disaster risk reduction solutions. This has helped vulnerable countries in the Greater Horn of Africa region to make better and faster decisions.In the same vein, Maki pointed out the RANET radio networks operated by the Meteorological Department in Kenya, through which farmers and residents are able to access climate related information via community based radio stations, which usually broadcast in local languages.‘RANET’ is an international collaboration of meteorological and similar services working to improve rural and remote community access to weather, climate, and related information.Less than two years after it went on air, Nganyi RANET Community Radio in Western Kenya for example, has become a valuable asset to the community, where many people keep glued on their radio sets listening to different programs, while other access the signal via mobile phones.Through this radio station, the community served by the station can now understand when it is likely to rain, whether the rainfall will be heavy to cause floods, when the dry spell is likely to begin, hence, helping them prepare for the eventualities.It helps farmers know when to plant and the type of seeds to plant depending on the amount of rainfall expected.The Horn of Africa region has been noted to be one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change in the world (IPCC, AR5, 2014) due to the inadequacy of resources to adapt socially, technologically and financially.Use of radio and mobile phones therefore ensures that the required information reach the people on the ground, as a way of reducing the negative impact of climate change.According to…
By Isaiah EsipisuDAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (PAMACC News) A conceptual structure agreed upon by Nile Basin riparian countries for organising policies, strategies and guidelines for sustainable management and development of the Nile River Basin some five years ago has enabled speedy development within the basin region.Talking to journalist members of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PAMACC) at the sixth session of the Africa Water Week (AWW6) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, John Rao Nyoro, the Executive Director for the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) said that the Nile Basin Sustainability Framework (NBSF) is now benefiting all the 10 riparian states.This comes after government officials from other countries attending the AWW6 confessed that developing projects over trans-boundary shared resources was proving to be difficult, given the political landscapes, frequent changes of power due to democracies in the neigbouring countries, and different prevailing policies.“While it is not a legal framework, the NBSF which is a suite of policies, strategies, and guidance documents – functions as a guide to national policy and planning process development and seeks to build consensus among countries that share the resource,” Nyaoro told the journalists.The sceptical leaders at the AWW6 singled out the longstanding dispute between Tanzania and Malawi about Lake Nyasa, in which an agreement for a project on the shared water resource has lasted over 40 years without a deal, and the grand mega power generating project in the Democratic Republic of Congo known as INGA, which has stalled for over 40 years.“What we did at the Nile Basin was to bring together all the stakeholders, and then we asked them to develop a framework that was going to govern activities along the basin, with reference to existing policies at country levels” said Nyaoro.As a result, the Nile Council of Ministers approved the NBSF in 2011, which has laid down NBI’s approach to developing guiding principles for water resource management and development across the Nile Basin countries.“Today, a country like Uganda, which previously imported rice from Kenya may soon start exporting the product to Kenya after it developed its wetlands, and is now farming rice more than before,” said Nyaoro.He said that the most important thing was to have all the riparian countries benefit from the basin.“Without the NBSF, there would be no consistent guidance for the sustainable development of new investments and no coherent guidance for the achievement of cooperation in sustainable water management and development,” he said.The Nile River Basin covers 10 countries, namely Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, The Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Eritrea participates in the NIB as an observer.The Nile River basin, which covers about one-tenth of the area of the continent, served as the stage for the evolution and decay of advanced civilizations in the ancient world. On the banks of the river dwelled people who were among the first to cultivate the arts of agriculture and to use the plow.The basin is bordered on the north by the Mediterranean; on the east by the Red…
