African Towns Can’t Respond To Natural Disasters –UN Report

A UN report says African towns are poorly equipped to respond to emergencies provoked by natural disasters, rural-urban migration and ecosystem destruction.

The report titled, “City Resilience in Africa: A ten Essentials Pilot’’, was published by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and made public at the UN Headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

It noted that the medium-sized towns lacked both early-warning systems and risk-reduction budgets.

The report stated that most local government workers had no direct access to computers, while information management systems were non-existent.

According to the report, there is recognition of the value of disaster-risk reduction and the need to build resilience but the means, knowledge and political commitment to do it is lacking.

“Indigenous local knowledge is valuable but it’s not enough on its own, especially given the challenge of climate change across Africa,’’ the report quoted the Director of UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign, Helen Molina-Valdes, as saying.

She added in reference to the way the phenomenon of global warming was said by many scientists to be causing a rising number of extreme weather events.

Molina-Valdes said the report’s findings  based on assessments of three East African towns were typical of the challenges faced by mid-sized centres throughout the continent.