September 8, 2021
By Dadson A. Musa
The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) made disaster risk management and intervention part of its mandates.
Due to climate change and other natural occurrences, disasters have become one of the things affecting the world at large. Some are man-made while others are natural. But human activities are leading to constant occurrence of disasters around the globe.
It has therefore become necessary for countries around the world to focus on disaster preparedness and management. Sierra Leone being the third-most vulnerable country in the world when it comes to disasters is getting ready for this phase in its development drive. As it has suffered from floods, landslide, mudslide, high temperatures, etc. there are plans to mainstream disaster and risk reduction into national development plans.
Disasters have the potential to erode developmental gains. So governments around the world should make its mitigation a top priority.
Center for Global Africa based in the United States of America which is an organization that targets to help blacks has committed millions of dollars to vulnerable countries especially very poor countries including Sierra Leone. The most common disaster in the world is flooding. Governments have seen the nexus between development and disaster as controlling one leads to perfection of the other.
Disaster risk financing is therefore a very important component for resilience and helping countries to get back on their feet whenever they are affected.
Also multi-hazard early warning systems must be put into place.
And the seamless flow of information will strongly mitigate disaster levels getting higher. When Ebola broke out in Sierra Leone in May 2020 there were limited resources for the country to have overturned that easily. But for the intervention of rich countries Sierra Leone was going to find it difficult. So resource availability can prove important in disaster prevention and then mitigation. Capacity is also another factor that determines a country’s resilience whenever struck by disaster.
Weak capacities can lead to a country being easily overwhelmed by manageable disasters. As conflicts vary from country to country so the approach in fighting them should be patterned to fit a particular country. Developing local framework, decentralization are among the mechanisms that will help us manage and mitigate disaster successfully. So to always be ahead in disaster mitigation and management there must be four priority areas which include risk governance, risk assessment, risk profiling and risk preparedness. So the APRM must hold government on this disaster prevention, mitigation and management to ensure citizens are always safe and ready for development.