Agriculture - Climate Change Preoccupies Nepad

A two-day seminar to that effect started in Yaounde on Monday August 13.

It is evident that climate change is increasingly causing significant damages to societies, economies and environment in Africa at large, where exposures vulnerabilities are high while the capacity to respond is low. It is rather unfortunate that smallholder agriculture which is the mainstay of most African countries is most hit by the scourge. About 75 to 80 per cent of African countries depend on agriculture with most significant actors being women.

It is against this backdrop that the New Economic Partnership for African Development, NEPAD, through its planning and coordinating agency organised a national consultation process to identify issues that are impacting on smallholder farmer activities and put in measures to enhance capacity building and increase production. The workshop also sought to share the preliminary findings from the Cameroon case study amongst key holders, obtain views and feedback from stakeholders on the preliminary analysis and identifying investment programme needs for Cameroon.

According to the Director of Programme Implementation and Coordination Directorate of NEPAD, Estherine Lisinge-Fotabong, 70 per cent of smallholder farmers are women thus NEPAD has to indentify concrete actions to support, working in collaboration with the Cameroon government to empower women. On his part, the Executive President of the Pan-African Parliamentarians Network on Climate Change, PAPNCC, Hon Awudu Mbaya Cyprian underscored the importance of climate change saying though Africa emits less than four per cent of greenhouse gases, PAPNCC has decided to tackle the practical part of fighting the scourge by carrying out "operation one woman, one tree" to make Cameroon a green country. Crowning it all, the representative of the Minister of Women's Empowerment and the Family, Dr. Niger Thomas Mageret said 52 per cent of Cameroon's population are women who contribute 75 per cent of agricultural work and produce 80 per cent of food in the country. Yet they don't have access to land and appropriate technologies, and do not have the 30 per cent quota on decision-making. At the end of the workshop, participants are expected to endorse the preliminary finding and come out with recommendations to be forwarded to the authorities for action.