Mindset Change: Winning the war against poverty and perception through climatepreneurship in Africa

By Dr. Richard Munang

United Nations Environment Programme 2016, Baobab Programme Innovation Winner; 2023 Global Your Nottingham University Alumni Award Winner; Environment, Climate Change and Development Policy Expert - Dr Richard Munang, changes the debate and narrative on how environmental and climate action solutions can be leveraged as a source to spur entrepren

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Regency Publishers
• Release date: Mar 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781962313940

Book preview

Dedication

To Constance, my cherished wife, and Danielle, my inspiring daughter, whose unwavering love and support have been my steadfast companions through every peak and valley. Right beside me for all the highs and lows. You inspired me to keep going forward.

To all the dedicated Innovative Volunteerism actors and everyone who believes that challenges are disguised opportunities for us to seize and turn them as stepping stones for a better world

Preface

The task of saving the planet requires an extraordinary reckoning with ourselves- with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have turned our world into a space of doing just what pleases us, and the effects and impacts are already upon us. Despite alarming signals from every scientific report, we seem not to listen to the urgent call to action. Just in 2023 alone, global losses from climate disasters far exceed $100bn in eye-watering financial losses. Behind the dollar, figures lie millions of stories of human loss and suffering and the death and displacement of people around the world. Be it storms, floods, droughts, or heat waves, to name a few. Most of these impacts affect some of the world’s poorest countries and, more so, Africa. Despite all these, the urgency for climate action has not taken centre stage. We are divided.

Though this was short-lived, it took a pandemic to unite us as a global community, but climate change and environmental crisis have not stopped for COVID-19. Instead, COVID exposed some hidden aspects that need to be understood to accelerate global solutions to global challenges, especially for Africa and the global south.

Externalizing solutions is a non-starter. For the past 60 years, Africa has not fully weaned from externalizing solutions to its challenges. The COVID-19 emergency has offered us the latest shock therapy that we cannot live on borrowed salt. That we cannot set sail on someone else’s star. A stark reminder that this model of dependency is a failure. For example, we read multiple rounds of stimulus packages running into the trillions of US dollars extended by developed economies to bail out their countries. It is a blunt demonstration of the urgent need to change tact and embrace the approach of local solutions to contextual challenges because externalizing solutions has repeatedly proven to be a non-starter.

Sadly, none of this surprised me. Over the past twelve years, I have spent my career working on the climate change nexus between science, policy, and action. I have been part of crunching the numbers, getting the science to the field to test the waters of environment and climate action solutions and engaging the continent’s populace where their livelihoods are destroyed, putting millions at risk. I have seen first-hand how the generally accepted narrative that environment and climate action are a social undertaking and primarily the government’s responsibility has led to a mindset of dependency and supply-drivenness instead of looking for opportunities. It has made the narrative of climate action an investment opportunity that unlocks opportunities for many a hard sell- hindering the full participation of some stakeholders who are reluctant to embrace a market-driven paradigm. I have seen institutional lethargy where the uptake of environment and climate action from an enterprise and income opportunities lens is a new narrative separate from the traditional approach of taking climate action from the social lens established in most institutions. Such new knowledge tends to face resistance from bureaucracies where new paradigms are shelved and opted for the traditional ones. To surmount this, I have found that we urgently need to address climate change, using a fresh perspective that engages the whole of society to accelerate action to curtail the already dangerous impacts we are suffering. And to work with early adopters within state and non-state actors to spearhead the task of convincing counterparts to pick up new innovative paradigms.

We need a mindset change where the continent’s population, especially the youth, starts seeing themselves as solutions providers, not victims of circumstances. But just as daylight follows a night, COVID-19 has catalyzed the rise of some very critical lessons that we cannot afford to ignore from now and beyond if we are to take environmental and climate action holistically engaging the entirety of society. And these lessons arise from answering what I consider to be the most fundamental question of our time. And that is - how do we re-imagine, re-organize and re-design transformational environment and climate action solutions that involve us all as we reboot our mindsets? I used the operator we deliberately because these lessons are for each of us as individual citizens. And each of us has a role to play in answering this question if we are to embark on driving transformational climate action.

To do this entirely, we need transformational thinking. The big question becomes whether we have transformed as a continent and people. Let’s face it: across the globe, almost universally, Africa is a continent that is synonymous with adversity. Today, over 60 years after most countries gained independence, the continent is still in a steep struggle to get the basics of socio-economic progress right. For example, over 257 million people on the continent still go to bed hungry every day. Over 12 million young people – the highest globally - need jobs every year amidst shrinking economies that are up to 20 times less productive than competitors in today’s globalized economies. Up to 620 million people lack access to electricity. Bridging this gap using fossil-based power generators costs three to six times what grid consumers pay globally, a significant impediment to competitive enterprise on the continent. The number of people without access to clean cooking has been rising. Over 700,000 lives, most of them women and children, are lost prematurely every year because of indoor pollution exacerbated by unclean, clean cooking means across Africa.

Given these challenges, I have seen through our work across the region that there is still a sense of obliviousness when it comes to ushering ourselves to do that, which can help solve a problem of this magnitude that is accelerating literally every challenge we can think of in Africa. The continent has not been spared of raging global emergencies to add to the above peculiar risks. From the COVID-19 global crisis to climate change, Africa has borne the brunt like the rest of the globe. Africa is the most vulnerable region to the changing climate. It is already heating twice as fast as the rest of the world. The implication is that the economic misery that is already at breaking point and plunging millions into suffering is guaranteed to hurt current generations further and utterly disenfranchise those yet to be born.

If you are already worried about climate change and support climate action, then you are on the right path. The onus is on the present generation to draw the proverbial line in the sand and say never again. Just as the globe has come together and developed measures to respond to the COVID-19 emergency, including a vaccine in record time, Africa must urgently get together and put a stop to perennial disproportionate vulnerability. This calls for one thing – transformation. But a transformation that is undertaken on two dimensions- soft and hard.

On the hard transformation, I am an environment and climate action expert and practitioner who has worked with ground actors. Increasingly, I spend more and more of my time explaining why it matters to engage the continent’s most significant non-state actors constituencies- the youth and the informal sector.

Why? Because after engaging the continent through our work on climate action solutions and the data we have generated, I’m convinced that the most strategic and vital direction is for Africa to leverage its areas of comparative economic advantage to drive climate action from an enterprising dimension. From the informal sector that currently engages up to 80% of the active population to the youth who form over 60% of the people, coupled with the continent’s inclusive, climate-derivative economic sectors – its agro-value chains and clean energy. The combination of these aspects urgently needs to be super-charged and turbo-charged to become the main thrust of competitive economic growth on the continent. It is the brick-and-mortar foundation of climate action entrepreneurship or what I called in short ClimatePreneurship that offers the continent the quickest route to achieving the much-needed global competitiveness that is simply irreplaceable.

But the above is not possible without the soft transformation. So, what is soft transformation? According to wealth measures globally, a skilled person capable of turning challenges into enterprise opportunities is 4times the value of produced capital and 15 times the value of natural capital. A World Bank Analysis shows that spending just one additional year enhancing skills raises earnings by an average of 10% annually. This is higher than any alternative investment an individual could make. Buying a physical asset would give you 7.4%; a savings account would give you 4.7%; and a house 3.8%. Nothing beats enhancing your skills. This then means that the primary, sovereign capital that we need to mobilize in Africa and the world towards driving climate action from a socio-economic lens is one – human capital.

How we can get people to invest in climate action implementation from an enterprise lens, leveraging on what is already accessible to them, is the new perspective we urgently need to bring into climate implementation in addition to the hard transformation. The continent urgently needs a skills revolution where every citizen and resident pre-occupies themselves with one duty – how to use their skills, talents, aptitudes, and ongoing work to turn the continent’s myriad of challenges into enterprise opportunities that touch many lives. Doing this calls for a change in narrative and attitude to reboot the mind where individual citizens see themselves as the sources of climate action solutions and make themselves valuable in devising these solutions that Africa needs, not always expecting that these solutions will come from elsewhere alone.

Why are people not taking these actions and making themselves the solutions providers? The answer is that many have not been made to self-belief and see themselves as the drivers of solutions. The mainstream narrative for the past years has instead focused and peddled the wrong narrative on problems for problems instead of solutions to problems. We must move from this knee-jerk style of a problem-for-problem narrative to solutions to problem conversations. This means the continent must reject the pencil test definition where contextual understanding does not spearhead the definition of the continent’s narrative, solutions, progress, predicament, and even existence. For example, sometime ten years ago, Africa was described in the mainstream in flowery terms as a rising continent – simply because of the so-called natural resources boom that is always fickle and transient. In a few short years, the continent became a limping continent when the resources boom became bust. This is a pencil test, a moving target definition, where the continent’s identity is erased and changed not based on contextual fundamentals but the convenience of everybody else but the over 1.4 billion citizens eking out a living under the hot sun. Changing this perspective is part of the urgently needed soft transformation.

But how can we drive this by engaging the whole of society to transform for real? I’m asked this question nearly every time. The continent’s institutions must urgently embrace the need to give more chances to more people who know the importance of human capital. Take financial systems, for instance – the traditional model is always to extend credit based on an individual or entity’s physical assets and transaction records. This safe bet approach has proven its inability to foster real progress, as we already know over the many years it has been applied. But what do we do in a continent where up to 90% exist outside of formal banking systems? Transform. An estimated $300 billion in lending opportunities remain untapped in the continent’s vast informal sector that engages up to 80% of the continent’s working population, the majority being formally unbanked. Institutions must transform and consider soft capital as a basis for extending credit and tap into the intrinsic of developmental capital – human abilities.

An individual’s track record in terms of passion for turning challenges into opportunities needs to be the new currency, not the nature of their balance sheet alone. We have developed an approach called the Innovative Volunteerism approach, an incubation approach and model of transformational development, leveraging people as the sovereign capital, unlocking a new breed of climate action entrepreneurs who were given a chance on nothing but their passion for solutions.

It is essential to understand what is happening to the continent and use it as a strength to drive transformational environmental and climate action solutions. ClimatePreneurship is about looking beyond the turmoil of risks and focusing on selflessly devising solutions, using what is accessible to us. It is about retooling our skills, despite our educational and social background, with a clear goal in the mindset of turning climate change-induced challenges into opportunities.

Here’s the good news already happening across Africa, where passions are turned into profits. Through Innovative Volunteerism, young people across Africa are retooling their skills and finding purpose in devising enterprises that deliver relatably accessible solutions to the climate crisis. They are delivering these solutions to their communities as their primary market. They continuously research, leveraging the online space as a repository of knowledge and valuable ideas to perfect these solutions continually. And in the process, they are creating income and socio-economic opportunities for themselves and entire communities. From clean cooking to clean energy-powered agro-value addition- these young people are combining the soft and hard aspects of transformation by leveraging their skills, talents, and passion for working symbiotically with informal sector actors and delivering climate action solutions.

In this book, I want to show you how transformation is possible using what we already have now, not what we may hope to get. This is the transformation we urgently need in Africa. As you read on, may you be inspired to develop an eagle’s vision, the discipline of an ox, and understand your territory like a lion. And unlock wisdom to become a climate action solutions provider who leverages on ClimatePreneurship and make this inoculation against the perennial climate crisis a reality for all in Africa and the world. Because climate change connects to the things we all care about- the health of our families, the economic strength of our communities and the stability of Africa and our world. Fixing it isn’t only good for the planet; it is also good for all of us. The bottom line is this. To do something about climate action, you need to play your part with what you have, regardless of where you come from, how you look or your background. As someone who came from a very humble background devoid of opportunity or affluence like most Africans but who is penning this book today, I can tell you this is possible because I was once like you.

Believe it! Have Faith and Act Now!

Part One:

A House on Fire: Why we must Confront the Climate Crisis inflicting pain

and suffering in Africa

Chapter One

PUTTING AFRICA IN PERSPECTIVE OF CLIMATE CRISIS AND APOCALYPTIC TRENDS, STRESSORS AND EMERGENCIES

Introduction

We are about to cross into 2024 as I piece together this chapter. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the excitement surrounding the close of one year and the beginning of another. Fireworks lighting up the sky, ululations and shouts of joy are almost a universal hallmark of the turn of a new year nearly everywhere globally. However, for most, the challenges and responsibilities remain unchanged from one year to another. Most of those who went to bed almost every day until the last day of one year wake up hungry on the first day of the new year. Most of those who have been jobless for almost one year wake up jobless at the start of the new year. Unproductive economies in one year continue being unproductive even as a year transitions. Climate change and its horrendous impacts continue year out, year in, and so on.

The question is – how come people celebrate the turn of a new year despite some bleak realities confronting them? The simple answer is- hope. In most people’s minds, a new year represents a fresh start, a clean slate to correct past mistakes, seize new opportunities, and usher oneself to better days ahead. That would explain, for example, why over 50% of the global population make New Year’s resolutions. However, at the same time, over 80% of these resolutions are abandoned within one to six weeks of starting. And are repeated year after year. This is the clearest sign that hope alone is fickle and inadequate. The point is, therefore, to make hope tangible. And this happens at an individual and collective level when we prioritise answering the why question in everything we do, as opposed to focusing on the how and what questions alone, the traditional approach.

While I will elaborate more on this in the succeeding chapters, I will briefly put this into perspective even as we tackle the apocalyptic stressors that Africa faces. While Africa is a continent associated with adversity, it also holds the privilege of being the youngest continent, with up to 60% youthful population. I call this a privilege because wealth studies record that a skilled person capable of turning challenges into enterprise opportunities is 4 times the value of produced capital and 15 times the value of natural capital. This is a cornerstone of the demographic dividend, a significant development opportunity for Africa. This is an opportunity projected to sustain for several years because up to 42% of the global population and 75% of Africa’s population will be African youth in 6 years from today. This is to say that Africa holds the lion’s share of the most critical component of development capital globally. The question, however, is – how do we unlock this capital? The answer lies in having every citizen discover their why and ignite their passion and self-belief as they see themselves as the sources of solutions to Africa’s challenges. Not only looking to what they can do and how they can gain material benefit alone or who can bail them out. Consequently, a solutions-driven rather than a material-driven mindset is how Africa will unlock its sovereign capital. More of this later.

This chapter, however, puts into perspective the continent’s compounding challenges through the lens of the changing climate. From the science to multilateral events that bring to the fore the urgency for climate action and even the anecdotal evidence that we all perceive, there is overwhelming evidence that the climate emergency is rapidly driving Africa and the globe into a social, economic, and environmental apocalypse. Despite the build-up of apathetic biases, the science is unequivocal. Human-induced climate change is happening, and the climate change accompanying calamities- extreme weather events, floods, hurricanes, droughts and wildfires, displacement and resource scarcity are already upon us.

Stressors and Climate Emergencies Plaguing Africa

In 2020 alone, climate change-induced disasters cost the global economy up to $210 billion. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, the headlines consistently put us on edge. We saw uncontrollable wildfires that even the wealthiest countries in the world were unable to put under control and deadly flooding in Europe that thoroughly washed away buildings and cars. To the catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana in the U.S., From the record high temperatures in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, which is ordinarily known for its cool climate, to the loss of ice in the Arctic almost the size of the state of Florida in just one month, we saw a fair share of unsettling headlines reminding us of the climate change emergency. In the last 30 years, the number of climate-related disasters and emergencies has tripled. This has resulted in a staggering cost of over $3 trillion to the global economy. For Africa, which is already heating up twice as fast as the rest of the globe, this state of emergency has been a glaring anomaly for quite some time now. From a 20% decline in precipitation to a 20% increase in storm intensity to an 8% increase in arid and semi-arid lands and an up to 50% drop in rainfed agriculture potential, the writing of the climate emergency has been clear and consistent. In some countries, the famine frequency has been increasing - from one famine in 20 years between the 60s – 80s to a famine in 12 years in the early 80s to mid-90s, then a famine every two years going into the 2000s, to then a famine almost every year from the mid-2000s going into 2010s and up to the present times.

Cumulatively, this situation has escalated dire socio-economic prospects well into the future. These risks are grave to the extent that the losses projected to occur by 2030, 2050, and 2100 including a Gross Domestic Product drop of up to 15% forecasted to occur in eight years from today, will now come much earlier. The 14% higher sea-level rise and the 40% decline in yields in essential staples projected to occur by 2050 are currently forecast to move much closer to the present. As a result, the escalation of socio-economic misery, which is already at breaking point, is now guaranteed. As we speak, over 257 million people in Africa are experiencing hunger. Over 12 million young people join the labour market yearly amidst shrinking economies, looking for jobs they can’t find. Up to 60 million children are malnourished, costing the continent between 1.9-16% of its Gross Domestic Product. Combining these stressors with the COVID-19 pandemic and adding climate change, which has lived up to infamy as an economic risk multiplier in Africa, only makes the situation worse.

One particular risk worth mentioning is the COVID-19 impacts on the continent’s economies, whose constricting effects will be felt over many years to come. Accordingly, because of the pandemic, Africa experienced a negative 5.1% GDP growth, a 17% decline in exports, a 50% increase in food losses, a loss of up to 50% of all jobs, and with about 93% of firms in Africa experiencing a decline of sales compared to previous years. With these losses already weighing down on the continent, it doesn’t take much to perceive the urgent need for the continent to climate-proof its socio-economic development.

Between 2017 and 2021, a cascade of events has provided a combination of anecdotal, scientific, and associative evidence of the urgent need to remediate the climate emergency in Africa and the globe.

Anecdotally, a spike of climate emergencies on the continent has left little room for imagination as to what the future of climate disasters will look like if we do nothing. To sample some examples, in 2017, we had 4 African countries experiencing devastating floods – that killed 25 times more than Hurricane Harvey, a once in 500-year storm. Then, in 2019, two tropical cyclones in close succession – cyclones Idai and Kenneth – hit southern Africa and caused a trail of losses: over 600 fatalities, over 1.7 million people affected and damages exceeding $3 billion. Almost simultaneously, East Africa and the Horn of Africa region were experiencing droughts that destroyed farmlands – the primary source of food and livelihood for over 80% of the population. These droughts left an estimated 15 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and deteriorated farmland and pastures, causing a spike in food prices of up to 300% more. These droughts were followed closely by yet another extreme climate phenomenon – called the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). This affected some 3 million people in East Africa with abnormal rains –300% - 400% above average. This extreme precipitation had catalysed the locust crisis – the worst outbreak in 70 years, even before communities could recover. And with this, up to $ 8 billion in food has been lost.

In 2020, we had devastating floods that raged in Sudan. They hit 16 out of the 18 states in the country and were considered the worst floods to hit Sudan in 100 years. The floods impacted over half a million people, caused heavy damage to the country’s infrastructure, compromised safe drinking water, and contaminated an estimated 2,000 water sources.

These extreme events leave no doubt, even to the untrained, that our environment and weather seem to be fighting humanity.

The Unequivocal Science

If we look at science, report after report has reminded us of the escalating risks of the changing climate. In 2019, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) published its analysis on the state of climate change in Africa. This report pointed out that climate change is hitting the most vulnerable hardest, with impacts ranging from food insecurity to infrastructure damage to health among critical areas. With these impacts, the report noted that Africa’s GDP would decrease by 2-12% with increasing global temperatures of 1 - 4.

In 2020, as the unprecedented COVID-19 raged, three scientific analyses warned of the escalating global warming leading the globe to the unsafe warming levels of an above 2 °C world. We had the United in Science Report, whose clear message was that climate change had not stopped for COVID-19. According to this analysis, while the economic slowdown necessitated by the containment measures caused a temporary decline of emissions of up to 17%, this was only temporary, and 2016-2020 remained the warmest 5-year period on record.

The 2020 UNEP Emissions Gap Report warned that the globe was on a path to a warming above 3.2 °C degrees. However, the report did provide a glimmer of hope through a paradigm shift of economic activities called the green pandemic recovery. Accordingly, this implies increased global re-prioritisation of fiscal investments in trajectories that lower emissions while driving the much-needed socio-economic bottom-line benefits. According to this report, following this trajectory would not only unlock urgently needed income and growth opportunities needed to power countries through the COVID-19 recovery but also do so while cutting emissions by up to 25% by 2030.

In close succession was the 2020 UNEP Adaptation Gap report. This report further buttressed the urgency for this green pandemic recovery approach, noting that it would limit losses in annual economic growth due to climate change to 1.6% while ignoring this paradigm would see losses increase by 2.2%.

Even before the dust could settle, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the 6th Assessment Report (IPCC AR6) in 2021. Aptly called a code-red for humanity, the core finding of this report was that the globe is on track to breach the 1.5℃ warming threshold in 20 years. The trend recorded in the report showed a trajectory towards more disasters if we maintain the status quo. For every 1°C of warming, extreme daily precipitation events will intensify by 7%. The report records that the Arctic sea ice is at its lowest in 1000 years. Ocean warming has increased 2-8 times. Sea-level rise is the fastest in 3000 years, and all these trends will continue to intensify as emissions and, therefore, the temperature continues to escalate. The IPCC report further reinforced that the window of opportunity in averting climate change catastrophes depends on ambitious actions taken in this decade up to 2030. What we can call the decade of climate action.

In close succession, the 2021 UNEP Emissions Gap Report