Africa Up Close

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

“The food system is complex; it is not just about food production,” said Florence Odiwuor, a Kenyan Southern Voices for Peacebuilding Scholar, at a recent event on the role of food security systems in sustainable peacebuilding in Africa hosted by the Wilson Center’s Africa Program. As a lecturer at the School of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Environmental Studies at Rongo University, Odiwour observed that given the food system’s interconnectedness with issues like education, gender, finance, and labor, “disruptions or failures in the [food] system have caused a lot of conflict in [Kenya].

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center

Seeing Loreta sort and dry her Omena sardines at the shores of Lake Victoria in Western Kenya, one may dismiss this small, middle-aged woman as an ordinary fishmonger struggling to earn a living.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Hydrogen fuel is becoming a central pillar of global decarbonization strategies. The hype over green hydrogen (the “fuel of the future”) and its potential to provide an abundance of low carbon fuel to transportation and industry has enticed several major emitting countries to scale up its production. And a UN-backed initiative wants to achieve a 50-fold production increase in the next six years.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Deteriorating security in Ethiopia, a country W.E.B. Dubois once described as where “the sunrise of human culture took place,” is deeply concerning. The last few months have seen a dramatic involution for a country that was once a poster child for sustainable development. The conflict between the government and rebel forces in Tigray is not just a matter of regional security, but a significant blow to the world’s efforts to fight climate change.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Thirty-four years ago, Burkina Faso’s president, Thomas Sankara, was murdered. Only now are his alleged assassins on trial. Had he survived, the arid, landlocked country of more than 20 million people might well have taken a far different path to development.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Secretary of State Blinken is right to focus on climate change and democracy during his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. At the top of his and everyone else’s mind should be the question: will democratic backsliding in countries like Benin make it more difficult to deal with the effects of climate change? Even more worrisome: will it worsen conflict hotspots, such as the West African Sahel, where climate change is playing a role? All eyes should be on coastal West Africa as countries such as Benin deal with violent insecurity and climate pressure creeping down from the Sahel. My ongoing research in Benin suggests that the country’s democratic local institutions, despite all their faults, are the country’s best defense against the breakdown in rural governance that has befallen Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso.