African governments are committing insufficient funding for disaster monitoring and management despite many placing disaster risk reduction high on their national agenda, a UN official has said, reports SciDevNet.
“Although the institutionalisation of disaster risk reduction has been high on the agenda of many African countries, there are still inadequate budgetary commitments for the integration of disaster risk reduction measures in typical government line functions and ministries,” Animesh Kumar, Africa programme officer for the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) tells SciDev.Net.
Kumar highlights some successes, including Ethiopia's disaster early warning and preparedness system, Mozambique's flood early warning system, Nigeria's disaster risk reduction integration into school curriculums, and island states in the Indian Ocean innovative risk management frameworks.
“Further, while [many] African governments have an overall shortage of funds for longer-term recovery [from disaster], the post-disaster recovery programmes of countries like Malawi, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Mali, Seychelles, Madagascar and Cape Verde explicitly incorporate and budget for disaster risk reduction,” he adds.