Water Food Energy for All (WFE4A) Africa

Laurent-Mascar Ngoma is an agro-environmentalist and development practitioner with 25 years of national and international experience in climate change, adaptation, environment and sustainable development programme formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. He has led over 80 international missions for countries’ support and capacity-building, seminars, workshops and conferences on climate change and sustainable development (including the COPs under UNFCCC). For the past decade, Laurent has served as UN specialist in Climate Change Adaptation - as Programme Manager, Director, Chief Technical Advisor, National Technical Supervisor, and Senior Expert for environment, climate and sustainable development in the SIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa. Laurent is a church youth leader, mentor, and capacity-builder. Previously he was an activist in a student democratic movement (1990), President of the UK Tank Alternative Congo (2005-2010), Honorary President of various development NGOs, Director of US-based Nehemiah (2015-2018), and Founder and Past President (2016-2018) of Rotary Ossobo in Sao Tome and Principe.

African nations are suffering from a triple vulnerability (water-food-energy) to climate change due to lack of strategic approaches and practical tools. The African continent (mainly the sub-Saharan countries) is suffering from hunger, desertification, land scarcity, water inaccessibility, droughts, inundation and pandemics. There is a lack of common and integrated approaches to solving lack of access to water, food and energy. I am proposing an African programme entitled Water-Food-Energy For All (WFE4A). Through this project, we will tackle these three core challenges, starting with the most vulnerable communities in each nation, and using a bottom-up approach and real, sustainable appropriation mechanisms. The programme will start with an advocacy and awareness campaign to decision-makers, technical institutions and end beneficiaries; then will be implemented in three phases - water for consumption and crop production, crop production and processing, and energy for crop conservation and agribusiness. Creation of a Pan-African climate early warning system.

By 2030, according to the 2012 “Water Scarcity in Africa: Issues and Challenges” conference, 75-250 million people in Africa will be living in areas of high water stress, which will likely displace anywhere between 24-700 million people as conditions become increasingly unlivable. Over 70% of the world’s poorest countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa and 55% of the African population does not have access to energy. Decision- and policy-makers need to be properly aware of the magnitude of these issues so that the continent’s triple vulnerability can be tackled. The problem needs to be resolved at three different levels: an upstream level to develop a climatic early warning system, a downstream level to implement programmes that develop resilient communities, and a middle level to resolve issues of sustainability and appropriation by changing consumption and living patterns. 

The lack of climatic data worsens the impact of climate change in vulnerable communities and countries. Many developing countries do not have data for a functional early warning system, which affects crop production and leads to crop scarcity and famine. Climate change pushes populations to migrate and disrupt forests and surrounding biodiversity. A climatic early warning system for each African country will resolve the problem.

The project consists of developing resilience and adaptive mechanisms for vulnerable communities to combat the negative impacts of climate change. This will be done in the following phases:

1. Implement a local data availability system (which needs to be connected to a national early warning system) for drought, inundation and floods in the continent’s most vulnerable communities to climate change.

2. Make the agro-meteorological information available to the end users (essentially farmers and smallholder garden producers).

3. Provide water for consumption and irrigation systems to populations in order to irrigate their plots and maximise production at a local level.

4. Provide necessary technical advice for crop choice and production.

5. Provide energy, and facilitate access to clean energy in order to process, transform, and store crops. 

6. Provide capacity building, hard and soft equipment to technical institutions (data management centres, ecological observatories, etc.)

7. Provide end beneficiaries with information, equipment, inputs and tools to increase crop production.

8. Provide facilities (greenhouses for smart agriculture, crop processing centres, warehouses for crop storage, etc.)

To attain these goals, an advocacy and awareness campaign must be conducted to policy- and decision-makers in all regional and subregional institutions, countries and development partners.

For the past decade, I have been in contact with various communities of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and sub-Saharan African countries, in my capacity as UN specialist, to design and implement programmes for resilient development and livelihood improvement for adaptation to climate change. These communities face common challenges: lacking access to water, not being able to produce enough crops, and exposure to the negative impacts of climate change. Lack of access to water has pushed them to assault their surrounding environment through illegal wood cutting and charcoal production, including in national reserved areas. I have conducted projects to transform charcoal producers to horticulturalists and forest guards, brought electricity to fishing communities, improving lives in terms of product conservation, income generation and fighting poverty to some extent. This project adopts a bottom-up approach, drawing on these various field visits and consultations with communities and local leaders. The project addresses their needs at three integrated levels: increasing the awareness of decision-makers, pushing technical departments to act in funds mobilisation and assistance on project implementation, and involving the end beneficiary in the project implementation for sustainability and appropriation.

It is now well documented that human action is largely responsible for climate change. This exacerbates food, water and energy insecurity among vulnerable populations. In sub-Saharan Africa, further environmental degradation stems from lack of access to these resources. Vulnerable populations facing climate change are forced to use their ecological services in unsustainable ways to survive. Therefore, ensuring the world’s poorest, most marginalized and vulnerable communities have access to basic necessities such as water, food and energy is a very robust way of elevating core issues by building awareness and driving action to solve the most difficult problems of our world.

12 years ago, I was involved in the first ever climate change adaptation programme in Africa. Financed by the Japanese government, the programme involved 21 countries of the continent. Tremendous results were achieved: Africa trained the best specialists in climate change adaptation programme management for three years. Unfortunately, at the end of the programme, all of these well-trained human resources were lost and used elsewhere in their respective countries. The programme could not be scaled up. As one of the trained specialists, I’ve worked on many projects at national levels and have seen the struggle of several countries in understanding the challenges they faced and the struggle of teams to design, formulate and implement effective programmes. In 2014, I was involved in an early warning programme with 11 countries as a regional board member. From this came the idea to implement a multi-country adaptation programme in order to keep skilled staff in-countries, and to cover and synchronize both upstream and downstream issues of climate adaptation and mitigation in Africa in order to permanently resolve the issues of poverty through provision of water, food and energy for all.

The issue of adaptation to the negative impacts of climate change in Africa is very important to me. I have worked in Africa for many years and have a biological bond to the continent. Thanks to my background and professional experience, I have travelled to most of the countries in Africa and visited many of its communities. Poverty is a common issue across Africa, and is related to the same factors: water, land, food, and energy. Every community that has access to clean water, food (even if it’s not enough), and land to cultivate, suffers less. The personal connection has been made through professional means by working with these different African communities, talking to them and understanding the problems from the perspective of those suffering the impacts of climate change. Their perspectives therefore differ from mine, as an external person, as well as those of their leaders and decision-makers to measure awareness and sensitivity to these human-degrading challenges. This pushed me to believe climate change is a continental challenge far beyond my modest person and any single nation. Therefore, having a common approach to build resilience among the communities vulnerable to climate change is giving dignity to humanity.

I strongly believe that I am the best candidate to lead this programme. For the past 25 years, I have been a development practitioner in areas covering climate change adaptation and mitigation, natural resources management, renewable energy, vulnerable communities’ resilience development, disaster risk management and risk prevention, food security, and integrated water resources management across the continent. I am a mature professional with experience managing multicultural teams, adapting to new environments, and delivering expected results within deadlines. I have analytical, technical and scientific skills of great contribution to write clear and concise reports and advise technically on policy design, formulation and implementation. I have worked in Africa and with SIDS for more than 10 years. I have robust experience in conception, design, formulation, implementation, and overall management of programmes and projects, and focus strictly on operational use of finance and sustainable management of resources. Over the last 18 years, my work has regularly required me to prepare annual work plans, financial budgets, reports, and quarterly reviews, using the results-based system of evaluation for logical results and indicators frameworks. I have enjoyed supervising and working directly with beneficiary communities, and have also established a regular liaison with donors and other financial partners for UNFCCC convention-related funds mobilization. I have managed the environment and sustainable development portfolio of the UNDP-GEF for the past 15 years, and have supported and technically advised governments and UN institutions to mobilise, design, formulate implement, monitor, and evaluate projects and programmes of adaptation, mitigation, and biodiversity.

Dealing with adaptation and climate change issues in Africa is no different than playing with government priorities. Among the various projects and programmes I have designed, implemented, monitored and evaluated, I have learned that projects are prone to failure for three different reasons: lack of political engagement, frustration of the technical institution, and opposition of the beneficiary. The most challenging part is always bringing the decision-makers, technicians, and beneficiaries together. One must be permanently aware that the perspectives of these groups continuously differ, and keep negotiating for smooth programme implementation. Permanent dialogue and common understanding at high levels is necessary, and awareness and capacity building at beneficiary and technical levels are hyper important. I have faced challenges bringing all parties together to agree on the importance of projects and programmes. For example, where the government sought to use force to evict illegal occupants of a state space to build ecological houses, I used participative and educational approaches to bring the relevant parties to agree on the project’s importance and permit its implementation. This is the same challenge of convincing charcoal producers to stop their activities and presenting alternative livelihood options, including producing vegetable gardens for local markets to reduce emissions.

During the implementation of the UNDP Africa Adaptation Programme in one of the small islands, I became aware that the island did not have a national strategy and contingency plan to respond to natural disasters. I used my leadership skills to convince the UN management, the decision-makers at a technical level, and the direct beneficiary populations of the importance of these tools for the country, and leveraged my connections with bilateral donors to mobilise funds to create the national council for preparedness and natural disaster response. A new national organ in charge of contingency and natural disaster was created after negotiating with three ministers in charge and resolving conflict between the fire brigade and the organ. During the following years, I helped the government to insert the organ into the national budget and gave it a new status. After negotiating funds between UNDP and the World Bank, I helped the organ to become the first national 24/7 observatory centre for disaster risk management associated with a climatic early warning system. The organ involved various institutions, including the meteorology and hydrology departments, the fire brigade, the coast marine, the army, the police, and the Red Cross, to ensure its success.

My project is a continental framework for action in adaptation to climate change. The project is partnered with another organisation called Winpartners and with the Africa Climate Action Initiative (ACAI), for which I am an advisor and member. ACAI’s vision will be used as an umbrella to help carry out the downstream work in the field, while the upstream work will be done in concertation with other relevant organisations and local partners.

It is the Pan-African and integrated approaches of this project that make it special. While African initiatives often function in a standalone mode, the Water-Food-Energy For All (WFE4A) is presented as a lasting platform through which African communities can meet immediate and future needs. The beauty of this project is in its approach to bring 17 countries together into one common programme, to build together peer review platforms and an African resilience development approach to climate change, disaster reduction and pandemics. This programme will create the conditions to give all African countries a common start and standard in terms of strategy experience alignment and sharing learned lessons in order that no country will be left behind, except in extreme cases of national circumstances such as unrest or conflict. The approach will be a bottom-up approach based on the assessed needs of end beneficiaries with their own participation. All countries must change the paradigm by giving priority to the development of climate change information systems, data management centres. The framework highlights sustainable integrated resource access, with the provision of a roadmap focusing on access to clean water and piped water for household and agricultural uses, intensification of agricultural production, creating conditions and centres for processing produced crops, and access to sources of renewable energy to support an emerging semi-industrialisation. Further common infrastructures can be added, such as crop processing centres, food store houses for emergency plans, and contingency plans for health and food insecurity.

This project will have local and global impacts to fight the effects of climate change. The implementation of this project will permit through its activities the following changes:

1.  Creating access to clean water for consumption and farming to more than 100 million people (sample) in sub-Saharan Africa will reduce the number of water-borne diseases, increase the productivity of households thereby reducing extreme poverty, lengthen population lifespans, and give access to more sustainable production (access to water for crop production will conserve forests and biodiversity, and reduce GHG emissions globally.)

2. Climate data and information services: Developing climatic, food, and pandemic early warning systems across African countries will help to control GHG emissions. This will, in fact, permit accurate data collection in each country in order to have a proper data management centre for national communication of countries in sub-Saharan Africa to the UNFCCC (most of the data are not very accurate for lack of operational hydro-meteorological stations covering national territories/food store warehouses and crop processing centres). Institutions lack the means and mechanisms to archive and use the data available. Implementing national centres for collection, analysis and diffusion of climate information for local end-users will help improve crop production and water use, and allow preparation for measures against inundation, drought, extreme climate events, and famine. Land restoration will save lives and improve the impact of human action into the environment significantly.

3.  Points 1 and 2 – once achieved – will globally permit the attainment of all 17 of the SDGS, since African countries host a major share of global hunger and extreme poverty. 

4.  Access to renewable energy for the remaining 55% of sub-Saharan African countries will permit the emergence of a clean semi-industrialisation of the continent. Crop-processing centres, storage, and improved conservation of food products will reduce post-harvest losses and the need for imports, providing some independence by creating employment and income-generating opportunities for youth and women, and providing the youth with new technologies and greening jobs for the continent. Avoided GHG emitted by cargo transportation and importation of goods will significantly improve air quality.

With regards to what I have done over the course of my career, my work has served more than 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, through resilience development, adaptation to climate change, agro-ecological services, and programme and project development and implementation. 

The aim of this project is to target the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. The desire is to impact the life of about 100 million Africans, and within the next five years, to reach about 500 million Africans.

In order to have a maximum impact to achieve this project, I will conduct advocacy and awareness activities to decision-makers, technical institutions, and potential beneficiaries to explain why this project is important not only to me, but to Africa and to the entire world.

Impact 1: Understanding the challenges of development and the impact of climate change adaptation in Africa to act as an ambassador of climate change adaptation for Africa.

Impact 2: Publication of 3 books. I have three manuscripts of books (adaptation for Africa, the climatic early warning system, and the African youth). If these books are published, I will use them as a means of spreading the message around and attaining a larger audience for realization of the vision of the project.

Impact 3: Advocacy and awareness campaigns to regional and sub-regional African organisations, decision-makers, universities, national institutions, multilateral donors, institutions, UN conferences, etc.

Based on my professional background and field experience, I foresee the following factors presenting barriers to the achievement of my goals through this project: 

Financial: To engage in advocacy and awareness campaigns, one needs the means to travel; to print out the necessary supports, such as books and leaflets, with the materials translated in at least 4 languages (English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish); and to do what is necessary in each country and to collect summaries and reports on its work. 

Technical: Due to lack of data regarding the issue of climate change in the sub-Saharan African countries, it is difficult to clearly define what is missing for each country, as most meteorological institutions are still under-budgeted by their respective institutions and are not able to advocate for more budget where the urgency is not visible for the country.

Legal: This project is an African initiative and necessitates partnership with other organisations working in the same areas of development, as well as national institutions and other development partners. The question of how the vision can be shared to help countries to understand their development models and adopt a Pan-African adaptation approach from which each country might be inspired will need to be answered and appropriate legal frameworks followed and strengthened. 

The global financial crisis:  It might have an effect on the way African governments will be planning and using their budgets. Donors may reduce their support and pledges to governments at an international level.

Climate change is a reality and this cannot be denied any more. One out of two people have already heard about climate change and many institutions are working on the issue, but only a small real impact is being shown in the field. In order to render the work more effective, a proactive approach is necessary. To overcome these barriers, I am planning to use the following approaches:

1.  Publishing three books and using the income generated by them to start the advocacy and awareness around Africa. An online platform can be created along with the book publications for their promotion.

2. Leverage my skill set in convening multi-stakeholder agreements between decision-makers, technicians and end-users. 

3.  Partnerships with organisations like ACAI, Winpartners and other institutions can pass my initiative through them.

4.  Offers of free technical advisory and capacity building services for national institutions, and free workshops and seminars on results-based management (RBM) or programme and project development, and find mobilization approaches.

5.  Creating mechanisms of sustainability to offer services to organisations working in the areas of climate change in Africa, and offer them support and advice.

International opportunities and platforms could be identified to continue expressing the need for Africa to have its resilience development programme in place.

I am partnering with organisations in Africa and Canada, such as Winpartners in Gabon, ACAI and CAP Network in Canada, other local organisations in Congo, Ghana, Gabon, Togo, Burkina Faso, and the small islands. At the moment, we are working on developing partnerships, identifying the most vulnerable communities and formulating responsive programmes to support the downstream development of community climate adaptation. We are working towards the creation of an online platform in order to pass the message among us at this level.

The business model I am proposing is in the form of packages that will be offered to political decision-makers, technical actors, and end-user beneficiaries at different levels. The model will offer capacity-building packages to the three groups mentioned above (through advocacy and awareness), a technology and training package for national institutions to give them technology acumen, and the support needed to fulfil their mandate towards the end beneficiaries. This technology will include training as a yearly programme and equipment upgrading and/or acquisition, as well as refresher courses for the staff and funds mobilization for the institutions, the provision of soft and hard equipment (agrometeorological stations, hydrometeorological stations, drones and high capacity computers, data management centres, observatory centres, laboratory equipment, warehouses for storage capacity, processing centres, etc.). The end beneficiary will receive the necessary support daily from technical institutions and capacity building in terms of technics, small equipment, and gadgets to collect, read, and interpret data, equipment for smart agriculture (greenhouses, hydroponics techniques, storehouses, solar water pumps, improved and climate resilient seeds, etc.), and equipment for small food and crop processing. Beneficiaries will receive training on cooperative creation and organisations, and technical advice on agribusiness through conservation, crop processing, and access to markets. These three groups identify as key components to fight climate change and the above-outlined packages form effective responses to the triple vulnerability of Africa to water, food, and energy. Synchronising the operation of packages for each group will permit the attainment of maximum expected results.

This business model is in the form of a programme that will be implemented by phase over a duration of 20 years. This period will be divided into four phases: each phase of the programme and its complete package will thus take 5 years. Each country will have 4 phases x 5 years to implement the programme. We believe that, by 2040, sub-Saharan Africa will be a robust partner and solid technical contribution in the fight against climate change and famine globally. To bring money into this model, three different approaches will be used: 1) business sustainability mechanisms which consist of publishing and selling books and other materials to the beneficiaries at different levels and the population in general; 2) selling of products and services through international and technical consultancies to international organisations, institutions, academia, participation to seminars, workshops, visiting schools, and universities; 3) in addition to the first two options, it will be possible to create a network of solid and sustainable donors through partnership with ACAI and other institution partners in Africa and around the world. At the moment, these are the three ways to generate income for the initiation of the model and permit us to start the work of advocacy and awareness to the beneficiary to be consumers of our business model, until the mainstreaming of the programme at the country and continental levels can guarantee its sustainability.

This is considered to be the third option in our business model. Further details can be given when solid partnership and pledges are received from potential donors.

My estimated budget for the year 2020 is USD 100,000. 

I strongly believe that applying for this Prize will be extremely beneficial. I can see - through the objectives - an opportunity to fulfil my dreams of having the proper platform to speak to Africa and the world on issues regarding climate change adaptation. I’ll have the space needed to propose my innovative approach for resolving the legendary African issues of water shortage, famine, and access to energy. This is to be done through a common approach with the full support of international partners, which will prove that Africa has the resources it needs to resolve these challenges. This prize will give me visibility and the right mandate to speak and share my modest experience accumulated during the past 25 years to others, learn from other individuals, and be counted among those trying to resolve the African issue and global fight to climate change. The prize will help me to eradicate the barriers (be them political, financial, technical or institutional) to the achievement of the mission and give my programme and I adequate notoriety to pass the message to international organisations at regional and subregional levels. We’ll be invited to the table of discussion when the topics of conversation are Africa, climate change, or the water, food, and energy matters inside and outside of the continent. The prize is my key to the next level. I thank you immensely for the opportunity.

Resolving the issues of water, food, and energy scarcity in Africa is not a standalone or a one-man assignment. It requires multifaceted partnerships and support. This support needs to be deeply rooted in institutions, organisations and partnerships around the world. The partners will be from scientific backgrounds to document evidence and findings; from NGOs working upstream and downstream that will be able to support the programme in countries and mobilise the funds towards the right channels, giving each country the fluidity attached to the use of tools and appropriate mechanisms. In summary, partners will be needed upstream, downstream and in mid stream at political, financial, technical, monitoring, and evaluation levels in order to succeed in this 20-year programme, a challenge that I am presenting to the Prize.

ACAI, multilateral donors and partners