African leaders asked to adopt risk management in development

Ghanaian Chronicle: A Tanzania environmental expert, Prof. Adolfo Mascarenhas, has asked leaders on the Africa continent to consider risk management in their development process, including making the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) more national and local. This was because disaster had been cyclical, rather than directional, in this part of the world.

According to him, there was an urgent need for Africa to look within itself and elsewhere, than to inappropriately follow models that are simply against the poor and the victims in society, in order to have the beneficial use of knowledge and experience, without being xenophobic.

Prof. Mascarenhas, who is the Founder/Director of Institute of Resource Assessment at the University Of Dar el Salaam Tanzania, made this request during a presentation at a five-day Commonwealth Journalism Course on Development Journalism in Dar el Salaam, for young journalists drawn from the Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Commonwealth Press Union (CPU), with support from the Commonwealth Foundation in UK, organised the training programme, which focused on the media’s role in development and the MDGs, with emphasis on climate change

It was directed at helping young journalists understand the issues that stand in the way of the socio-economic development of their respective countries.

…The Professor continued that within the perspective of Sub-Saharan Africa, most countries were richly endowed with natural resources, yet they remained the single largest cluster of the poorest countries in the world, particularly the high Africans.

He stated further that the continent was, and is, still extremely vulnerable to a host of conventional disasters, such as floods, droughts and earthquakes, and therefore, should not underestimate the impact of these problems….