A new index assessing adaptive capacity across Africa

The recent Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC posits that across Africa, temperatures will continue to rise in almost all regions, while precipitation will decline in North and Southern parts of Africa and increase in the Sahel and most of sub-Saharan Africa. Vulnerability to these stressors is expected to increase across Africa due mainly to declining adaptive capacities. There is therefore a need to develop novel ways of assessing and monitoring the adaptive capacity of populations and communities across regions and countries of Africa. This work, therefore, aims at developing and testing a new adaptive capacity index based on two key inversely related proxies of adaptive capacity which are literacy and poverty rates. The data for these proxies were collected for the period 1991-2021 from the Readiness Index Database on figshare, the World Bank Group and Macro Trends. The historical data were analysed using the newly developed adaptive capacity index. Regionally, the results show that North Africa and Southern Africa have the highest adaptive capacity indices while West Africa, Middle and East Africa have the lowest adaptive capacity indices. Nationally, Sao Tome and Principe and Seychelles record the highest adaptive capacity indices. Generally, the indices at the country level as well as at the regional level are within the low-range scale, depicting a generally low level of adaptive capacity when compared to other regions of the world. The index suggested here will serve as a tool for bench-marking adaptive capacity at various scales as it is easily applicable in various contexts.

Automated summary

According to the recent Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC, temperatures in most regions of Africa will continue to rise, while precipitation will decrease in North and Southern parts of Africa and increase in the Sahel and most of sub-Saharan Africa. The vulnerability to these changes is expected to increase due to declining adaptive capacities. To address this issue, a new adaptive capacity index based on literacy and poverty rates was developed and tested. The results showed that North Africa and Southern Africa have the highest adaptive capacity indices, while West Africa, Middle and East Africa have the lowest adaptive capacity indices. Overall, the adaptive capacity in Africa is relatively low compared to other regions of the world. This index will serve as a tool for benchmarking adaptive capacity at various scales.