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Published annually, the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration, dedicated to monitoring the evolving health profile of climate change, and providing an independent assessment of the delivery of commitments made by governments worldwide under the Paris Agreement. All content on this page is either Open Access or has been made free to read…

The Sahel is a place of untapped resources and opportunities. But, the region also has many complex and multifaceted challenges. The urgency of addressing the root causes of these challenges calls for greater solidarity, increased mobilization from the international community and strengthened partnerships. All these elements are essential for building lasting peace and preventing a relapse into…

Industrialization drives the sustained growth in jobs and productivity that marks the developmental take-off of most developed economies. Yet, academics and policy makers have questioned the role of manufacturing in development for late industrializers, especially in view of rapid advancements in technologies and restructuring of international trade. Concurrently, industrialization and structural…

Rain-fed agriculture provides employment for millions of smallholder farmers on the African continent, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 95 percent of cultivated land is unirrigated. But climatic shocks – including prolonged dry seasons and irregular rainfall – are depleting the fertility and productivity of soils, and jeopardizing the health and resilience of communities that…

Africa is in the eye of a triple storm. The last half decade has been extremely challenging from a climate perspective: from Cyclone Idai in Mozambique to heavy snowfalls in North Africa, and from desert locusts and fall armyworm ravaging crops across East and Southern Africa to floods in Ghana and other countries in West Africa, the repercussions of climate change have been felt across the…

West Africa faces a number of urgent and interconnected challenges. With temperatures rising 1.5 times faster than global averages, intense climate variability, reliance on rain-fed agriculture, and limited adaptive capacity, the region is fast becoming a climate hotspot. This, in combination with other stresses, is projected to lead to highly unpredictable agricultural productivity, loss of…