The Economic Commission for Africa
(ECA) has released an Africa Report on New and Emerging Challenges in Africa,
highlighting the challenges faced by African countries in achieving sustainable
development goals. The report highlights the adverse impact of climate change,
increasing water scarcity, biodiversity and ecosystem loss, desertification,
low resilience to natural disasters, potential non-achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), energy crisis, food crisis, limited
benefits from globalisation, health security, the global financial crisis,
trafficking and piracy, low penetration of ICT services, urbanisation, need to
develop better disaster response mechanisms, genetically modified crops, and
technology transfer. Africa is largely dependent on natural resources for
growth and development, but the realisation of these goals may be hindered by
climate change. The continent's low adaptive capacity is the main cause of
biodiversity loss, which requires long-term solutions such as the development
and implementation of appropriate policy guidelines, institutional
capacity-building, and deployment of adequate resources. Africa's highly
variable rainfall results in uneven distribution of water resources, with less
than 4% of the potential harnessed and developed for irrigation. Measures need
to be taken to improve water management and storage capacity to ensure a continued
supply of water for domestic and economic purposes and ecosystem balance. Despite
the global food crisis, persistently high food prices remain a problem in many
African countries due to droughts, reduced yields, depleting cereal stocks, and
multiple demands on existing stocks for human and animal consumption, as well
as biofuels.
