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Climate change resulting from global warming is more serious than many recognise, and for Africa the results are particularly severe, the continent enduring a wide range of ill effects, as President Mnangagwa noted this week.

The small rises in global temperatures, which have still produced the warmest times since the evolution of human beings, have already seen major climatic changes.

Africa is suffering more droughts, more cyclones, more floods as well as the increasingly severe heat. These are understood, and probably better understood than in most other continents.

But there are other effects, not least those on health where a lot of effort now needs to be made to simply preserve the gains of the last few decades as threats rise, and then there will be the extra efforts needed to maintain progress and offer decent health facilities to the people of Africa.

Africa is not just sitting back. This week policy makers and health experts from around the continent are meeting in Harare in the inaugural Climate and Health Africa Conference.

The need to outline the joint action we all need to take, and the need to make the rest of the world understand just what sort of threat we all face, have brought these groups together.

President Mnangagwa brought up the general background. Africa has been responsible for the least addition in greenhouse gases, largely because it is the least developed continent, but in addition is conserving and extending its own amelioration efforts, such as preserving and extending its forest cover.

Earlier stages of industrial and other development actually cut back on net carbon emissions.

Simply moving families away from firewood as the main cooking fuel keeps more trees in the soil absorbing carbon, and there are many other similar gains as a country develops.

But despite its low levels of net carbon emission Africa is suffering the most, and part of the solution is for others to understand this essential unfairness and the slowing down of economic development on the continent as we struggle to simply maintain our gains let alone expand our development.

President Mnangagwa noted that the general economic estimate is that climate change has cost Africa three to five percent of its gross domestic product.

Of course Africa can and must make the largest effort to solving its own climate crisis, and African countries are working hard to ameliorate the effects of global warming in the continent.

Some of these efforts are part of general development; for example Zimbabwe, like all African countries, is pushing expansion and development of health services, and while probably more effort is now needed, we are all making the effort.

Other ameliorations are our hard push on new farming techniques, more irrigation and so more dams, and other applications of our own scientific research and technology to the problem.

Again much of this is dual use effort, boosting development as well as helping people cope with climate change.

But it is fairly clear that Africa also needs to bring home to the rest of the world the seriousness of climate change and get more obvious effort made to bring the world to a net-zero position as quickly as possible, that is no increase in greenhouse gases, and then work out how carbon can be locked up once again to reduce what is already there to the levels we used to think of as normal.

Africa’s contribution to the increasing carbon levels is minute, so there is not much it can do to reduce global levels, but it needs to be on board with global agreements.

More pertinently at the moment Africa needs to be able to cope with the damage done by others to the world climate, and some of the costs of that damage control need to come from those who created the damage.

Then there is the need for Africa to keep developing. You cannot condemn people to poverty forever because if they were better off they would pump out more greenhouse gases.

The point is that this development needs to be carbon neutral, and the technologies exist.

Renewable energy in Africa will obviously be built largely on solar power, considering Africa’s position in the world and the lack of sustained hard-blowing winds.

Solar does require a high initial investment for panels and batteries, but has far lower running costs that coal or gas stations, even when the basic maintenance is taken into account and the need to replace failing panels and batteries in time.

This means that Africa needs access to high levels of capital for that initial investment to ensure future energy development is done “green”, although the price Africans will pay for that green energy will be enough to run and maintain the systems.

There are many other examples and while promises have been made in previous conferences, the actual cash on hand is not large.

So President Mnangagwa wants African countries to refine their joint approach at the forthcoming 29th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan next month, and at the next COP summits, to make it clear just what is needed in Africa to ameliorate the already severe effects of climate change and to prevent these getting worse.

Africa is certainly not sitting back and waiting for the rest of the world to act.

As this week’s conference is showing, we are between us doing a lot on our own, although we can speed up the progress with help, and we are ready and able to do more. But we cannot continue to be the ones having to cope with the damage of others and we need greater commitment for those states to lessen and end their damage, and to support those who have been hardest hit by the damage that has already occurred and will continue occurring.