Africa has always been an unstable region, especially since the modern era, but the continuing rising temperatures and change of weather patterns across the world is only helping to contribute to this instability, all while Africa itself develops and starts to produce fossil fuels of their own.
In Ethiopia, the effects of consecutive droughts are taking their toll as less rain is able to irrigate where subsistence farmers live – over 2/3 of the population. Because of this lack of ability to produce food, now an estimated 5 million people are in threat of starvation – and only half of the promised food aid needed has arrived. People are being forced to leave villages and family behind in order to survive and find fresh water, leaving wide areas for militant groups to pillage and expand their influence in, like al-Shabaab, preventing humanitarian efforts from getting to the places they need to be. This provides problems for the UN and other international organizations in how to deal with these militant groups while also helping the people who need it most- and labelling a militant group as terrorist isn’t as simple as it seems. By applying similar sanctions to groups like al-Shabaab as they do with Al-Qaeda, they would only make it harder for aid workers to get the food to the people living in areas controlled by these groups.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, as the rate of warming is double that of the global average and droughts are also becoming more frequent, they continue to produce and build more power plants to power the growing economy. These plants release CO2 and other pollutants into the air in neighborhoods, potentially causing 300 deaths per year. While Africa is developing, they are also only worsening their own situation by increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that serves to worsen their droughts, and therefore increase militancy in the region. While there are some limited protests of different coal plants across the country, the fact remains that investment in fossil fuels continues to rise, and South Africa still gets 90% of its energy by burning coal.
Africa is in a very precarious situation right now – while they need to industrialize to progress and catch up with the modern world in terms of living conditions, they are also contributing to climate change and instability in their own regions in the process. Food insecurity brought on by climate change related droughts necessitates that there is violence over the resources left, which makes it that much harder for governments to attract businesses and foreign investment, who want to make sure that their investments are safe from the unrest and violence in the region. Because of this paradox, there is no real answer for Africa- at least not unless the rest of the world does their share in eliminating emissions as well.