Warming Africa
By Georgina Goodwin
The African continent has warmed about half a degree over the last century and the average annual temperature is likely to rise an average of 1.5-4°C by 2099, according to the most recent estimates from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Africa is becoming the most exposed region in the world to the impacts of climate change. In Sub-Saharan Africa extreme weather will cause dry areas to become drier and wet areas wetter; agriculture yields will suffer from crop failures; and diseases will spread to new altitudes. By 2030 it is expected that 90 million more people in Africa will be exposed to malaria, already the biggest killer in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The environmental effects of climate change will have a direct impact on the economic development of many African countries with as much as nine to 20 percent of arable land becoming much less suitable for farming by 2080. Idah Pswarayi-Riddihough, the World Bank’s lead environmental and natural resources specialist for Africa, said this: “Climate Change adaptation is not different from development,” she said. “With additional financing made available to countries and all of the different facets of this work coming together, I believe that we can begin to see a very different Africa in terms of climate change. We can remain hopeful that something positive is going to come out of this.”
All Images ©GGoodwin www.georginagoodwin.com
Meet The Photographer
Georgina Goodwin
As an African visual story teller I feel strongly that this is my duty to make sure that the very real and fast-paced changes that are occurring all around us in Africa today are documented and our voices as Africans are heard all around the world.
- Georgina Goodwin.
Georgina Goodwin is an independent documentary photographer and Canon Ambassador based in Nairobi. Specialising in social issues, women and environment she works regularly for Agence France-Presse AFP and United Nations Agency for Refugees UNHCR, contributes to Getty Images and Everyday Climate Change and is a member of WomenPhotograph, a unique global collection of women visual story-tellers, and African Photojournalism Database, a collaboration of World Press Photo and Everyday Africa. Georgina’s work on refugee children in Tanzania is a finalist series at Siena Photo Awards, her personal work documenting cancer in Africa was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2015 Award for Sustainability and Photography. Both her coverage of Westgate Terror Attack which won Kenyan News Photographer of the Year 2014, and her coverage of the 2007/8 Kenyan post-election violence which was shortlisted for Prix-Bayeux Award 2008 have been widely published.
Georgina’s work has been published by NY Times, Newsweek, Elle Mag, FT, Vogue Italia, BBC, CNN, AFP, Reuters, UN, World Bank and many others, and has been shown in Times Square NYC, Tokyo Japan, The Louvre Paris, San Francisco Public Library, and by Magnum Foundation and #Dysturb at Look3 in Charlottesville, USA. Georgina is a Canon Trainer teaching storytelling workshops around Africa, she also teaches photojournalism workshops for Aga Khan University in Nairobi. She is also one of 19 finalists at TEDx Nairobi 2017 and a speaker at TEDx KakumaCamp June 2018, the first TED talks ever to be held in a refugee camp.
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