How the climate crisis affects Africa’s children

As policymakers converged in Nairobi, Kenya, last week to discuss solutions to the climate crisis, one point of focus was how children, especially in developing countries, bear the brunt of climate-related disasters.

“Children are physically less able to endure and survive during climatic disasters such as floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves, therefore they need to be protected against all these calamities,” Yvonne Arunga, Save the Children’s director for Kenya and Madagascar, told delegates at the Africa Climate Summit. And, she added, when children lose their homes, they also lose access to health care, education, food and security.

The numbers aren’t pretty. Data presented on the sideline of the conference by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) shows climate shocks left at least 1.85-million children in Sub-Saharan Africa displaced within their countries by the end of 2022, compared with 1-million a year earlier. Some, the IDMC report adds, were displaced multiple times. In Kenya alone, 187,000 children were displaced last year as a result of climate shocks, up from 27,000 in 2021.

But, indicatively, the number of climate-related disasters in Kenya could be even higher than reported, Arunga added. The IDMC report covers areas of Garissa, Isiolo, Marsabit and Turkana. But in the Rift Valley village of Uwanja Ndege, for example, the overflowing Lake Bogoria has displaced more than 1,000 people — most of them children; they’ve been living in difficult circumstances in camps for the past 26 months. News reports suggest the climate crisis, at least in part, could be responsible for the flooding.

The bigger picture is as stark. According to the IDMC, the total number of new internal displacements in Sub-Saharan Africa due to climate disasters in 2022 was almost three times higher than in 2021 — 7.4-million compared with 2.6 million. It’s the highest such figure ever reported for the region. Most, about 2.4-million, were in Nigeria.

Without action, the situation will only get worse: Save the Children estimates that by 2040 one in four children will be living in areas with extreme water shortages; almost 160-million will be exposed to increasingly severe and prolonged droughts. By 2050 a further 24-million will be undernourished as a result of the climate crisis.

As it is, the prevalence of malnutrition among children is already the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to NGO SOS Children’s Villages, and more than 30% of children in the region suffer from the physical and mental disorders that come with chronic malnutrition — stunting and heart disease, for example. This is happening while stunting is on the decline globally. More broadly, about 19.1% of the population of Africa in is malnourished — more than double the rate in Asia (8.3%), the second-most affected region.

Nairobi-based child development specialist Jennifer Kaberi told reporters on the sidelines of the conference that the youth, because they will have to deal with the consequences of climate change, should be included in climate talks. Seating in the children’s pavilion at the conference was reportedly reduced from 500 to 100 seats ahead of the conference, despite about 300 children from Kenya and 200 from Lesotho having written to Kenyan President William Ruto asking to participate.

Young people often have a unique perspective on environmental issues, said Kaberi. Their unfiltered outlook can highlight concerns that may otherwise be overlooked, and they can offer innovative solutions. Increased youth participation would ensure a more diverse range of voices, fostering creativity in problem-solving and inclusivity in shaping climate policies.

For Kuria Muthandi, assistant director of children services in Kenya’s drought-ridden Baringo county, education is a critical tool if future generations are to battle climate change. However, in something of a vicious circle, hundreds of thousands of children cannot access education due to the effects of climate change, including displacement as a result of drought, floods and community conflicts prompted by climate events. As a result, she tells the FM, the developed world needs to support childhood education in the most severely affected countries.

“When drought comes, going to school becomes difficult, and families are affected by hunger and lose their livelihoods,” she said. Then, when the rain comes, schools, homes, bridges and other essential infrastructure are washed away. “The situation needs urgent intervention,” she says.