Although the African continent is the world’s lowest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, it is increasingly affected by extreme weather events. Africa emits only 3.8% of greenhouse gases, far behind countries such as China (23%) and the United States (19%). However, they are the most vulnerable to climate change and their countries bear the brunt of the climate crisis. For example, Morocco suffers from drought conditions and is vulnerable to climatic changes such as unstable patterns of precipitation. As for Nigeria, it recorded 600 deaths in a decade due to floods.
According to the World Bank, approximately 282 million people on the continent are currently undernourished, due to environmental factors such as drought and environmental degradation as well as displacement. With each flood or drought, food security decreases by between 5 and 20%. As for the continent’s food import bill, it could reach $110 billion by 2025, unless major changes are implemented through climate-resilient agriculture.
Floods, heatwaves, and droughts threaten the livelihoods and lives of Africans, who make up one-sixth of the world’s population. Agriculture makes up 70% of livelihoods in Africa and should be supported by governments and organizations to find innovative solutions using advanced technologies. All to revolutionize food production and help eradicate hunger and reduce poverty on the continent.
Technology helps build a sustainable future
To successfully meet current climate challenges, food security, food, and agriculture must become smart. Technological developments in the agricultural sector will help meet the growing demand for farm automation, digitization, and sustainability. Smart agriculture contributes to a range of development goals, including reducing hunger and poverty. Thanks to weather forecasts, growing crops with high added value and communicating with experts for more support.
Governments and organizations have made pledges to tackle the climate crisis. They, therefore, need solutions that harness the power of technology, which will accelerate progress toward a sustainable future for the continent.
Technology companies play an important role in helping their partners across Africa to embrace and harness the power of digitalization. For example, in addition to investing $1 billion in the Climate Innovation Fund, which focuses on emerging climate technology solutions in underfunded markets, Microsoft is also a co-founder of The Carbon Call, a global initiative that uses data feeds, machine learning, and cloud computing. To improve the measurement, reporting, and verification of corporate GHG emissions. Microsoft is working to shorten the climate bill by expanding its AI research lab in Egypt and Kenya, according to a new African AI Innovation Council.
Technical skills are essential
Business evolution to meet the challenges of climate change will impact many operations, based on applications of new technology such as cloud, artificial intelligence, and customized services such as Microsoft’s Cloud for Sustainability. This will require an equally strong effort to provide businesses and users with a wide range of new skills needed for climate change adaptation and sustainable transformation.
The world’s entry into the digital age required supplying computers to schools. Likewise, a clean planet with zero emissions requires the science of sustainability to permeate all sectors of the economy.
One of the big challenges of closing the sustainability skills gap is focusing on specialized training for the jobs of the future. Employers must accelerate the skills development of their employees through learning initiatives, with a focus on knowledge and skills related to sustainability, as the world needs to prepare the future generation with sustainable jobs.
Technological innovation to solve the climate crisis
According to the World Bank’s Climate Risk Profile, Morocco is experiencing rising temperatures and increasingly variable precipitation, which has led to a 20 % decline in water resources over the past 30 years. Although the Moroccan electricity grid covers almost all households, it is still highly dependent on rainfall. By 2030, Morocco aims to provide at least 52% renewable energy.
To help Moroccan entrepreneurs find innovative solutions to these climate challenges, Microsoft has partnered with the Mohammed VI University of Technologies (UM6P) to offer a skills program called: Social-Up Your Start-Up. This entrepreneurship aims to positively influence and develop a new generation of social entrepreneurs who care about changing society.
Unlike the traditional business community, which develops its economic model to achieve environmental, social, and governance goals, positive impact entrepreneurs put their environmental and social contributions at the heart of their activities from the start. Entrepreneurship for Positive Impact is designed to enable change-makers to develop and unleash their social innovations at scale and in ways that enable them to accelerate their positive impact on the world.
Raising the challenge of life
The adoption and integration of technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, and others will transform the agricultural space leading to precision farming, which will revolutionize food production and help eradicate hunger and reduce poverty in Africa. Other measures include collective behavior change, driven by awareness of the climate crisis to accelerate the positive climate change journey. Here, strategic partnerships between governments and civil society organizations as well as the private sector enable knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Every business or government needs support, be it through data, AI tools, or digital infrastructure like the cloud to reduce emissions, achieve goals and enable sustainable development for Africa. To build a more sustainable future, Microsoft is introducing technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, machine learning, the cloud, and the Internet to support economies across the continent, because without the right technology, these environmental, social, and corporate governance linkages remain too ambitious and confusing.