Hailing from Africa or at least having strong familial ties to the continent helps bring a very different perspective, especially when it comes to seeing opportunities that foreigners, including well-meaning westerners, often miss.
African countries are going through a severe debt crisis and with the current state of globalization, what happens there is going to ripple around the world.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has significant economic, geopolitical, and social implications that reach African countries, too. Without swift action to shore up African economies, debt defaults, hunger, and instability could ensue.
All this converges into one simple fact: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will aggravate other humanitarian crises as well. With the global food supply at risk, we will see converging crises and aftershocks that will move across the planet.
With all the challenges African countries continue to face, these SDRs are needed more than ever.
Climate change in term of its impact but also in term of its implications, is very much connected to a lot more beyond environmental issues. It has all of these socioeconomic dimensions and citizens around the world, of course in African countries, are already seeing those dimensions of climate change.
These developments come at a time when China and Russia are strengthening their diplomatic, economic, and military ties with African countries. If Putin’s aggression in Ukraine leads to a new cold war, African countries may come under growing pressure to choose a side.
Together the two countries supply a third of the world’s wheat. Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil and accounts for 16 per cent of global corn exports. The majority of these exports go through Odessa and other ports on the Black Sea, which are now closed to commercial shipping.
The European Union’s infrastructure strategy is seen as a challenge to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Although sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest contributor to global emissions, it will likely be hit hardest by the impacts of climate change—from rising temperatures to extreme and destructive weather events.