"To move the mountain, we begin by carrying away small stones." This Confucius quote brings perspective to the overwhelming task of addressing the hunger crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. It is especially acute in the Horn of Africa, where Somalia is threatened by famine, and more than half a million children are at risk of dying.
In this multilayered food crisis that has no easy fixes, we have seen oases of community-driven change offering a ray of hope: the wealth of indigenous knowledge and ingenuity that can be tapped into and scaled up.
While we have heard a lot of people talking about how to address this crisis, with sweeping recommendations from the international community, conspicuous by their absence are the voices of affected communities. Yet they must be center-stage as full partners if we are to achieve the sustainable change that's needed.
A humanitarian leader in New York or Geneva may have the experience and knowledge to recommend many ways to reduce risks, but if we are to fully understand the specific contexts in which they exist and what solutions truly work for the people affected, we must listen to national and local actors.
When we as a global population face even the most challenging situations, there are pockets of affected people figuring it out—in their homes and in their communities. And while it may start small, the potential is immense.
From permaculture gardens that create income for families while promoting water and soil conservation, to the production of carbon neutral bio coal fuel and fertilizers made from livestock manure, solutions driven by local communities work.
In Ouagadougou, with support from the Burkinabe Red Cross, women's groups are using traditional methods to produce fertilizers to grow food, ensuring nutritional, economic, and environmental benefits to communities and reducing the reliance on external supply chains. The return to such indigenous practices has come out of necessity in the face of rising food and fuel prices as well as reduced availability of agricultural supplies.
Local, indigenous knowledge is also critical to early warning and early action needed to get ahead of climate crises. It's always better for communities—and more cost-effective—to prevent a crisis or reduce its impacts rather than to respond in the aftermath.
Research and evidence show that local farming and pastoral communities across sub-Saharan Africa have developed complex systems of gathering, interpretating, predicting, and making decisions in connection to weather. This knowledge is used to manage livelihood strategies and to reduce their vulnerability to climate-related hazards such as drought and floods.
In Ethiopia, pastoralists traditionally predicted long and short-term weather conditions by interpreting the behavior and activities of birds, insects and other wildlife, the alignment of the moon and stars, and reading of animal intestines. They used this knowledge to adjust farming activities and identify and manage risks related to natural hazards, livestock and human health, and conflict.
The strategies that help communities prepare for and manage climate and other risks can be further enhanced if scientific, indigenous, and local knowledge and risk management systems are all used in ways that complement each other.
There's no "one right way" to do this, particularly during a crisis of the scale unfolding across Africa. But local knowledge, and local people, hold the key to keeping communities safe in their own specific contexts.
At the IFRC—the world's largest humanitarian network—we know that real change is locally led. Our volunteers see this every day, even in communities facing multiple climate hazards and other threats to their resilience, such as underdevelopment, security risks, COVID-19, and currently, the conflict in Ukraine.
However, while locally led organizations are best placed to support communities to deliver their own solutions, they can't do it alone: greater investment in local actors is required. When technical and monetary support is given to local actors, there is a sense of ownership and we have witnessed real commitment among community members. By engaging communities directly, we are able to figure out and implement what works best together.
If we support, replicate, and scale up the traditional and innovative solutions they hold, these oases of change will achieve wider reaching impact for communities in need around the world.
Yuve Guluma is senior officer of food security and resilient livelihoods, disasters, climate and crises at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
Hortense Sombie is food security and livelihoods coordinator at the Burkinabe Red Cross.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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