ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- The first African Ministerial Conference on Meteorology (AMCOMET) Forum on Tuesday advised African countries to modernize weather, water, and climate information services so as to create sustainable development across the continent.
Jointly hosted by the African Union (AU) and the Ethiopian government at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa from September 12 to 15, the forum envisages building consensus on modernizing information services in Africa's meteorology sector.
Representatives from various African countries, academia, private sector leaders, and international organizations, who are attending the forum, argued that capacity building endeavors would help as an impetus for long-term disaster risk management and climate resilient development in the continent.
Josefa Sacko, Rural Economy and Agriculture Commissioner of African Union Commission, also stressed the importance that better policies and strategies have to further enhance access to information about forecasting weather and climate conditions.
According to Sacko, over 2,000 natural disasters, the majority of which resulted from drought-related famine, have killed more than 880,000 and affected 460 million people in Africa since 1970.
Floods are most frequent, accounting for 42 percent of economic damages by contrast, while droughts affect 78 percent of the population, she noted.
According to the World Bank, the economic cost of recorded weather-related disasters in Africa in the last 20 years is estimated at 10 billion U.S. dollars.
The World Bank further projected such forms of disasters to increase in frequency and intensity, mainly due to the increasing climate variability across the globe.
