Review of Disasters in Africa :

Professor . M. Khogali.

Disaster Management & Refugees Studies Institution , the International University of Africa.

1.    Introduction :

      Africa faces many disasters of different types and nature , but Africa is not the only continent that suffers from the impacts of disasters , many of which are common to other parts of the world . However , there are disasters that are specific to some continents and are not experienced in Africa , or if they are found they are restricted to certain areas or they are of low strength. That is because of differences in climate or in the geological structure , as well as in the different nature of the human activities . For example avalanches occur in the cold and high area of the mid and high latitudes and they are very rare in the high lands of Africa . Equally volcanoes which were common in Africa during the geological times are presently rare except in few areas such as the high lands of the Cameroon . Forest fires break out in any area of dense vegetation ,but they are more common to forest areas of the mid and high latitudes where trees are soft and catch fires easily .

1:2   Concept of Disaster :

Disaster are defined differently , but the common definition     includes the following points :

(a)             They are events due to natural or human causes , and in many cases the natural disasters are aggravated by the action of man . The negative impacts of disasters are often great and fall beyond the ability of the local or regional communities to mitigate them , and as such out side help is often sought.

(b)            Disasters could be rapid or slow in their occurrence .

(c)             An events , such as lighting could only be considered a disaster if it has negative impacts on man , and as such deserts have no disasters . Thus disasters are measured by their effects on man , animals , and vegetation .

1:3  The world awareness of the seriousness of disasters has increased because of the following factors :

(a) Increase in the number of disasters , especially disasters of human origin or disasters that are aggravated by man

      " action".   Examples are desertification and forest fires .

(b) Increase of human populations in areas that are prone to disasters , Turkey , Iran, India and Pakistan are examples .

(c)  Increase of large Towns :

      The annual report of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent ,2004 stated that between 1992 and 2000 , more than 7200 natural disasters occurred and they led to death's of more than  200,000 persons , while the material losses  , were more than 800 billion dollars . It may be expected  that the negative impacts increase in the futures as about half of the world population reside in about three percent of the world population areas , and that one in three cities in the developed world are exposed to natural disasters.

1.4 The most important disasters that are prone to occur in parts of Africa are as follows :

-         Drought .

-         Desertification .

-         Exceptionally  heavy rains .

-         Floods and torrents .

-         Earthquakes .

-         Hurricanes .

-         Industrial disasters .

-         Forest fires .

-         Human disasters.

-         Animal pests and diseases .

-         Plant pests and diseases .

-         Poverty .

-         Mal – nutrition and famines .

Each of these disasters would be dealt with separately .

2: Drought :

2:1  Africa is a continent divided almost equally by the equator . It          extends to about latitude 35 in the south and  to about latitude 38 in the  north . This gives Africa the following climate characteristics:- 

(a)             Tropical and semi – tropical climates ,

(b)            Except in the equatorial region , rainfall is seasonal and decreases as one moves away from the equator ,

(c)             Extensive areas are considered permanently dry in the sense that evaporation increases over the total average rainfall , and the areas that have annual rainfall  less than 400 mm are considered dry .

(d)            That all over Africa rainfall fluctuates from one year to another and even from one month to another during the rainy season .

(e)             That the fluctuation  in the rainfall is felt more severely in the drier parts where the rain is originally marginal and that a drop of 50 - 75 percent or more of the average annual rainfall is considered  drought disaster . Extensive areas such as in Senegal , Mali , Burkina Faso ,  Chad , Central Sudan , Zambia , Zimbabwe are subjected to frequent droughts . Other points about the rain are that the high heat makes the small amount less useful to grazing or cultivation . The same effect is noticed when the vegetation cover has been removed and the rains run away instead of being absorbed by the soil . It is also noticed that in some years that  at the start of the season rains may be good  and that encourages the farmers to start seeding and the plants grow , but then the rain stops and the plants wilt or die .

2.2   The factor that determines the amount of the rainfall and the

        degree of the fluctuation is the position of the Inter- Topical

convergence zone (the belt between the dry air from the desert and the humid air from the ocean , which in turn is affected by the distribution of the pressure systems ). 

2.3  A drought is considered a disaster because it means less water is available to crop production or grazing . Fore example

              Elobeid  Region in the Sudan has an annual average rain of about 380-400mm , but in 1984 it received only 96mm which was not sufficient for cultivation nor was it for grazing .

2.4 In the history of the Sahailian  countries famous disastrous  droughts occurred in 1913 , 1973 , 1982 – 84 , 2004 and as well as in other periods .

2.5  The drought maybe very biting  in the following cases :

       (a) When a number of drought years follow each other , and in that case the grain storage of the farmers would be depleted in the second year and famine may results , or people would be forced to move away to the camps of the displaced people .

       (b) When the fertility of the soil drops , crop production would decrease even if the rain is normal .

2.6  In addition to the negative impacts on the crop production the farmers may be forced to horizontally expand the cultivated areas to less fertile areas to compensate for the low amount of grains received due to drought . Alternatively the farmers may be forced to reduce the fallow period and cultivate the land without giving it a chance to regain its fertilely .

      (c) Wild life would be reduced either because the farmers kill them to obtain food or they migrate to other areas where they can find food and water .

     (d) The farmers , without food or money , resort to other activities that include cutting of trees to sell wood or to make charcoal , thus contributing to desertification .

     (e) Also many people would move to towns or to irrigated areas along the Nile. This contributes to further congestion of towns and separation of families .

     (g) Repeated drought reduces the level of water in the natural lakes such as lake Chad , or in the lakes behind dams . This in turn  would adversity  affect the areas under cultivation .

3:  Exceptionally Heavy Rainfall :

 3.1 In some years heavy rains , vastly more than the normal , fall  over extensive areas , in the semi - desert or even  in the desert. The problems may not be just the drop in the total amount , but excessive amount may fall in a short period of time and that would be beyond the ability of the soil to absorb it , and the results would include :-

         (a) houses built of such materials as clay or mud bricks           would either be  totally or partially destroyed . This was the case several times in rural Africa .

          (b)    railways and roads may be washed away,

          (c)    in areas where the slope is negligible , such as in the clay plain of eastern Sudan , the rain water may cover wide areas and stay there for some days , killing the newly grown crops . In that case and after the rains evaporate the farmers should reseed . It would not be a practicable solution to dig ditches to drain the water , as  that would be expensive , and the new channels would need bridges added  ,expenses .No part of Africa is immune from heavy rains , but the eastern coast of Africa , Madagascar and Mozambique  may suffer from repeated hurricanes which bring heavy rains .

4:  Floods and Torrents :

 4.1 A flood is a seasonable rise  in the level of water in the river channels  as a result of heavy rains . All the rivers in Africa , except the equatorial rivers where the rains are throughout the year experiences floods .

4.2  Floods could be categorized to three types :-

 (a) medium floods as a result of average rain .In that case the rain water would be confined to the river channels , and would not cause a disaster ,

(b) Low floods as results of low rainfall . this may result in a disaster for countries depending on irrigated agriculture as water in the river would not be sufficient for irrigation. Also low areas where the banks of the rivers are annually covered by water and be cultivated , would be dry . The history of Egypt tells of or many cases when that phenomena occurred . Also at the present , narrow stripes of the Nile  that depend for cultivation on whether or not the

   " gerifs "  are flooded suffer , the same case with river Senegal and other rivers ,

(c) High floods where water could not be confined in the channels or to the narrow low areas adjacent to the banks , but could also spread over extensive areas , and thus destroying buildings and other proprieties , and cover grown crops .

4:3  High floods are not restricted to big river , but may also happen in some wadies or small rivers. A case in point is river gash in eastern Sudan . It is a seasonal river originating from Eritrea  and carries large amount of silt which has already raised the river bed . The level of water of high flood is currently above the level of Kassala town . In 2003 a sudden high flood occurred and large stretches of the town was drowned causing huge losses in properties specially to houses and fruit gardens.

4.4 High level of water in the river channel is a natural and repeated phenomena , but flood disaster is man made . that is because :-

(a) man removes the vegetation cover from areas in the upper reaches of the water causes , and by doing so greet amount of water runs away instead being soaked into the soil ,

(b) man builds houses and other buildings in the lower areas that are prone to floods . Many rivers in U.SA , for example used to have high disastrous floods , but remedial measures were taken : the upper reaches were reforested , dams were built to regulate the flow , and man is no longer allowed to build houses in areas that are exposed to flooded .

      Floods are also famous in the rivers of China , India , Bangala Desh and many other countries . However , China started to construct huge dams to generate hydro electric power and to regulate the flow of water . It could be stated here that rural people in Western Sudan and along the western banks of the white Nile have the traditions of the building houses on the higher grounds , thus avoiding the possibility of floods.

4.5  Its possible to reduce the danger of floods by taking the necessary steps which include :

       (a) installing gauging stations at strategic points to measure the level of the water and the amount of the flow , and convey to the people in the lower reaches the possibility  of floods ,

       (b) neighbour countries from which rivers originate and cross the political boundaries should  co- operate and carry information of heavy  rains and the possibility of floods to the vulnerable population .

  (c) people should not be allowed to build houses in low areas  near the banks of the rivers ,

  (d) after the highly destructive disaster of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean at the end of 2003 ,people became aware of an underwater earthquake near the east coast of Africa . Thus international co- operation is needed to monitor and give early warning to the people along the shores. It could be stated here that the sea waves of the tsunami of 2003 took seven hours to reach Africa . If there was a system of early warning a lot of damage could have been avoided ,

  (e) a giant program of reforestation in the upper reaches of rivers such as the Blue Nile or the Niger would not only reduce the possibility of floods but would also protect the soils of the upper reaches from being washed down .

5:  Desertification :

5.1  desertification is not the same as desert .

A desert is permanently a dry land , has no or very scanty vegetation , no human population except where underground  or surface water  are found . On the other hand desertification means the occurrence of conditions similar to these in the desert . Further , decertified areas usually have some months of rain , Desertification is therefore due to human practices through the natural factors may play a role as well .

     Desertification is not a recent phenomena , it is old and is due to the irrational use of the agricultural and grazing resources and to the continued of wood cutting from wide areas . Desertification is therefore one of the important factor in the deterioration and the downfall of some civilizations and town in the Middle East , including the Sudan .

5.2 In the thirtieth of the last century professor Stebbing of Edinburgh university studied the desertification that occurred in West Africa and the Sudan , and published a number of articles and a book by the title " The encroachment of the desert in the Sudan and elsewhere in Africa , 1956 "

       Stebbing relying on historical evidence , stated that during the Eleventh Century A.D extensive areas extending as for as latitude 18n (now desert ) were populated and there were considerable economic activities .

       Stebbing findings , however were disputed by a number of scholars , thus shelving the question of desertification , but the question came to the glare with the drought of 1969-73 and the United Nations called for the UNEP conference in 1977  on desertification .

5.3  the question of desertification was always linked to drought , but while drought is a natural phenomena desertification is very much the result of human activities . When the land is continually over - cultivated without the use of natural or artificial fertilizer and without giving it a period of rest , it looses its fertility , its vegetation cover , and it becomes an easy victim to wind erosion .The same factor is observed in the grazing areas . Some scholars kept advocating that nomadism does not cause environmental problems because the livestock do not  graze in one area , but grazing is rotational . This idea proved to incorrect in a situation where the number of livestock keeps increasing all the time . In such a case an owner become keen to rush his animals to the areas of the new growth before giving the plant a chance to complete its cycle of growth and lay the seeds . In addition , to over cultivation and overstocking there is also the over - cutting of trees to obtain wood for domestic use and for building huts and houses . In most the African countries over 80 per cent of domestic energy is derived from wood .

5.4  In many African countries three types of desertification are            observed :-

(a)             the removal of the top soil . This is specially so in elevated areas where there is slope , and where the vegetation cover has been removed . This is clearly seen in the Red Sea Hills in the Sudan , but it is not very clear in Ethiopia as the volcanic soil is deep . The soils from these mountains continued to be removed for thousands of years ,

(b)            Sand encroachment . This is very widely spread in the Sahalian countries of West Africa , which are adjacent to the Sahara .It is a problem also to the internal delta of the Niger river as well as to the riveraine lands of north Sudan . The later region is actually a part of the desert from the climatic point of view ,  but the Nile provides water and good silty soil .The sand , in many parts buried the soil and rendered it useless for cultivation .  

(c)                         The last type is where the soils have lost their fertility leading to reduction in crop yields . It is observed that with the loss of fertility the crop yields , continued to be low even when the rainfall returns to normal

5.5   The outcome of desertification is similar to those of the drought  :

   (a)  displacement of population on large scales with separation of the family members and poverty as the crop yields are reduced and as the nomads  loose their livestock through selling at very reduced prices , or through death as a result of poor or no grazing .

  6 :  Earthquakes : -

6.1   volcanoes are not common in Africa during the present

    era.  Earthquakes do occur in many parts of Africa , but

 Except in Morocco and Algeria , the earthquakes in most parts of Africa  are weak and do not , so far cause great damages .

 Two earthquakes occurred in Egypt  between 1990 – 2005            , and one in Khartoum in 1993 . In all cases the forces , be it in                                            Egypt or Sudan was less than 5 on Richard scale .

6.2  Yet no one grantees that serious earthquakes would not occur in the Africa in the futures . Africa should keep an open eye to its eastern coast as the Indian Ocean has experienced two underwater earthquakes in 2003 . Should an earthquake takes place in the India Ocean near the eastern coast the damage might be serious . Further , recent studies showed that there is a center for earthquakes in the area of the White Nile near Khartoum . If a strong earthquake occurs during the flood time of that river great damage to Khartoum would results .

7: landslides :

7.1 These are usually associated the earthquakes and high areas . A number of small landslides took place in the area of Jebel Mara  in the Sudan , and these were linked with the earthquakes that took place in that area .

8: Hurricanes :

8.1 Africa is not famous for violent hurricanes as these are associated with huge water bodies in eastern coast of continents between the equator and latitudes 30-35 .  So only the eastern part of Africa that many suffer hurricanes . But all the dry lands of Africa are famous for the dust storms which usually cause some discomfort but no great damage .

9: Forest Fires :

 9.1 Fires could breakout in all areas where there is dry vegetation covers . They are usually severe in the forests of the mid and high latitudes where there are dry leaves and broken branches on the surface of the land and the trees are of soft wood .

9.2   Dense forest are rare in Africa except in the equatorial  and semi equatorial region . Most of Africa is savanna or desert lands, where trees are not dense and are made up of hard wood . But in the savanna parts the space between the trees is covered by grasses which turn dry during the dry season . It is here that fires breakout after the rainy season .

9.3  In the past the colonial authorities used to order the tribal people to open fires lines . This tradition was neglected when the African countries became independent . That was mainly because the people were not paid for their work . The results  of the fires could be the burning of about 30 percent of the grazing potentials.

10. Conflicts and Internal Wars

10.1 Conflict and  wars are the work of the humans , and as such they are very old.

10.2. The people of the Africa are composed of large numbers of tribes of different origins and cultures .In the past and as a result of the absence of strong governments many of those kept their tribal  identities. Further , the political and administrative boundaries did not develop in natural ways and were the creation of the conflicting  powers. As a result conflicts between the tribes kept flaring up from time to time. But during the foreign rule peace  and order were forced on the people to a large extent.

10.3. With independence , however, conflicts and local wars began to break out. The cause for these were many and included conflicts on the use of the resources between the settlers and the nomads , as well as because of the unacceptance of the rule of certain factions over the others . Thus in 1954, when it become clear that the Sudan gained its independence a mutiny of the southern troops broke out . That  lasted till 1973. Again it flared up in 1983, And continued till 2005. In Nigeria  , after 4 years from independence the Southern Eastern part revolted and  formed the short lived state of  Byafara. Local wars in Africa are many and it seems that they will continue for some times. There are wars in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea ….. and others.

10.4. No solutions for wars seems to be in sight  , but these wars cause the death of many people , (civilians and military) . Further , wars deplete the financial resources and retard economic development.

11.  Thus stopping the local wars should be one of the challenges to the African Union , and it is high time for the African people to understand that the various problems can not be solved by wars, as in wars no part of the fighting factions would be a total winner. Africans should learn from the countries of Western Europe who fought among them-selves two world wars and in the end they started , since 1956 , when the iron and steal community was formed ,to establish bodies for co-operation  till in  2004 ,  when they reached the stage of  forming the European Union , at first for the countries of the western part of the Continent  but at the present included most of the eastern parts as well , over 50 member states.

12: Human Diseases:

12.1 Africa gained the reputation of being a continent of many diseases, and that thought to have been one of the important reasons why its interior discovery was delayed. Despite the fact that there has been important improvements in the preventive and curative medicine, diseases are still widely spread, and new diseases such as aids appeared .

12.2. Among the famous diseases in Africa are :-

a.     Malaria.

b.     Tuberculosis.

c.     Typhoid.

d.     Dysentery.

e.     River blindness.

f.       Hepatitis, and.

g.     HIV (Aids).

12.3. Because of the limited time and space only three of those diseases are discussed there. The selection is mainly because of the availability of the data.

12.4. Malaria:

This is a dangerous disease and it is very widely spread in all the countries of  Africa, and it is thought to be  the number one killer in the Continent, despite the fact that it could be cured it discovered in good time . Nevertheless , It stays in the blood and will flare up if the infected person becomes very weak for one reason or another.

12.5. The data usually revealed by the government or by WHO does not show the whole truth. That is because many people when attacked by any fever they think that it is malaria and they go straight to commercial pharmacies and buy anti- malaria drugs. So the number of such diseased persons does not appear in the statistics.

12.6 Malaria is transmitted by the mosquito type Anopheles gambia. Such mosquitoes spread in hot climate where fresh water is stagnant. In the past the season for malaria was usually the rainy season. However, this is no longer the case. The misuse of fresh water in the growing urban centers  , the digging of irrigation canals became added factors in the spread of malaria throughout the year in many African countries. The effective combating of malaria is through the draining of stagnant water.

12.7. Malaria does not differentiate between individuals or communities. While the wealthy families combat mosquitoes by chemical spraying (costly operation), they can not drain the stagnant water in the canals and ponds in the open spaces and streets. In addition the mosquitoes fly and visit all sectors of the community. The most affected people by malaria are usually the old people, children and the aid carriers. It is among these people the death from malaria is more common. It is therefore the duty of the individuals, the regional and the central governments  as well as the international concerned bodies to try to eradicate  malaria.

13. lung  Tuberculosis:

The virus of this disease is found in the air all over the world, but the most vulnerable persons are:-

a.     The underfed and the malnutritioned persons.   

b.     Weak persons.

c.     Those persons living in crowed lodgings and working places where the ventilation is weak , and in camps of the displaced people .

13.2. The T.B. situation in Africa has deteriorated rapidly. At has been reported recently in the Sudanese papers (31/7/2005.) that about 40,000 Sudanese annually get the disease and more are excepted to suffer. The papers quoting the WHO director said that the T.B. in the year 1995 killed 17 million persons all over the world and that the T.B. cases in the Africa has tripled, and that 22 countries in the Continent are seriously affected by the disease. However , presently the diseased persons could be cured if the disease is discovered in good time.

14. H.I.V. (AIDS):

 Table( I) , Countries With 5 Percent of The Population in The Age Group 15-49 Carry Who The Virus Aids.