Over 150mn kids in Africa gripped by poverty, climate disaster: Report

Nairobi, Oct 28 : More than 150 million children across East and Southern Africa are gripped by grinding poverty and climate disaster, an international charity report said.

The charity, Save the Children, said in a report released here on Thursday that 16.31 million children across Kenya, or 67 per cent of the country’s children, are living with the dual impacts of poverty and the climate emergency, reports Xinhua news agency.

Save the Children Kenya and Madagascar Country Director Yvonne Arunga said the climate emergency and issues of inequality are deeply connected, and cannot be dealt with in isolation from each other.

Arunga said crises like these push people even deeper into grinding poverty and leave millions of people even more vulnerable to the next flood or drought.

“In Kenya, this connection could not be any more obvious. The devastating drought we have seen in Kenya and the larger Horn of Africa is the worst in 40 years and has hit the poorest parts of the country hardest, leaving millions of people hungry and many displaced,” she added.

South Sudan topped the list of countries in East and Southern Africa most likely to face this “double threat”, with 87 per cent of children in the country affected, followed by Mozambique (80 per cent) and Madagascar (73 per cent), according to the report titled — Generation Hope: 2.4 billion reasons to end the global climate and inequality crisis.

Kenya ranks the 10th highest (67 per cent) globally and third in the region in terms of the overall number of children facing this double threat, said the report.

The report found that while 21.24 million children in Kenya are estimated to be affected by at least one extreme climate event a year, some of them are at particular risk because they are living in poverty and so have fewer resources to protect themselves and recover.

Save the Children warned that if the climate and inequality crisis is not addressed with urgency, the frequency and severity of humanitarian and cost of living crises are set to soar.