Sharm el Sheikh – While negotiators at the UN climate meeting have haggled over policy on global warming, young African innovators showcased their grassroots innovations to tackle environmental pressures.
Growing up in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, Calvin Shikuku, 24, said he saw the piles of festering garbage in his informal settlement, a community plagued by poverty, joblessness and high energy prices.
Together with other young people, he started to collect organic waste and press it into fuel briquettes as an alternative to dirty charcoal, said the founder of social enterprise Motobrix.
“We found that we can utilise more than 30 percent of the waste in our community which would otherwise end up in the environment, pollute our rivers and lead to disease outbreaks,” he told AFP.
The UN mega-event in Egypt billed “the African COP” hosted a children’s and youth pavilion and recognised an official youth constituency – yet, many young advocates said they have felt overlooked.
“It’s very hard to find young people’s voices actually affecting negotiations,” said Vicky Aridi, who works with UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited project.
She argued it is often younger people who come up with practical “bottom-up approaches” to address environmental problems and innovate “at the grassroots that bear the brunt of climate change”.
Shikuku agreed: “I don’t think technical young people are taken very seriously. Maybe it’s because people think we don’t have enough experience, but we are at the forefront of the climate change issue, and we are offering practical solutions.”
Solar lamps from e-waste
Zimbabwean Aluwaine Tanaka Manyonga, also 24, said he remembers studying “by candlelight” for primary school exams in 2010 as the capital suffered frequent blackouts.
Nine years later, drought depleted water levels in Lake Kariba, the country’s main source of hydro-electric power, plunging Zimbabwe into its worst power crisis since independence in 1980.
But by then Manyonga, an electrical engineer, was working by the light of his own invention, the Chigubhu Lantern – a hand-held solar-powered lamp made of repurposed electronic and plastic waste.
Manyonga and his group, Zambezi Ark Technologies, went on to develop an off-grid solar-powered lighting system for schools and homes in the country, over half of which still lack a stable power supply.
He was honoured at the COP27’s youth pavilion, which he attended virtually.
Another participant, Joyce Nyame from Ghana, coordinates the Duapa Afforestation Pilot Project, which trains young people to plant trees and then monitor their growth using citizens and drones to collect data.
“For nature-based solutions to work, they need to come from the community’s indigenous knowledge,” Nyame told AFP.
“Through the use of nature-tech to translate this knowledge into data that policymakers can understand, we are able to amplify the voices of these young people.”
‘Treat problem, not symptoms’
Sudanese medical student and climate activist Watan Mohamed, 22, who worked on the Global Youth Statement presented to the COP27 presidency, said people like her should be in the room pushing leaders to do more.
Mohamed told AFP that climate change is not just a policy matter for her but a life-and-death issue.
Poverty-stricken and conflict-torn Sudan is the world’s fifth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change, according to Notre Dame University in the United States.
Hit by intense floods, Sudan “doesn’t have a strong infrastructure system, so water stays there for weeks, which creates the perfect habitat for mosquitoes that cause diseases”, Mohamed said.
“I have had malaria three times this year,” she said – among the more than 1.7 million cases recorded so far this year in Sudan, according to the health ministry.
“As doctors, we’re meant to treat the problem at its roots, not just the symptom,” said Mohamed. “And the cause is climate change, which is why we need to advocate for climate solutions.”
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Source: AFP
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