By Halima Umar Saleh
Sandstorms have been lashing parts of Africa with increasing frequency and intensity, compounding the woes of a continent already battling natural calamities such as drought, heatwaves, extensive floods, tropical cyclones and rise in sea levels. The resultant loss of life, damage to property and population displacement are the unkindest cut.
The latest such sandstorm to strike the continent was in Cameroon this February, with a huge cloud of dust from the Sahara Desert sweeping through much of the country, mainly the northern parts.
According to the country's minister of transport Ernest Ngalle Bibehe, "half of the country" faced the fury of storms that disrupted transportation and fuelled respiratory diseases in the affected areas.
Ramat Hassan, a 23-year-old fisherman from Darak town in Maroua district of Cameroon's Far North Region, recalls how the "frightening" spectre of an approaching sandstorm left him and his colleagues pulverised.
"When the storm came riding on strong winds, everything everywhere was caked in a thick pall of dust. There was total darkness. We couldn't even see the river where we were fishing," he tells TRT Africa.
Hassan and his fellow fisherfolk managed to find their way back home from the river, but some were stranded and couldn't get back until the following day.
"Worse still, the sandstorm caused serious flu and cough in many people, including myself," he says.
Parts of northern Nigeria had also been hit by a sandstorm last year, halting economic and social activities.
Though there were no official figures of casualties at the time, some residents of the country's northeastern state of Borno say the sandstorm was so intense that it aggravated the condition of those with asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases, including lung cancer, and caused infections among children and the elderly.
In June 2018, a sandstorm in Sub-Saharan Africa had affected many countries like Chad, Niger, Mali, northern Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. One of the worst-hit areas was the northern Nigerian state of Bauchi.
"Many people thought it was the end of the world," Malam Aminu Makama, a resident of the area, tells TRT Afrika.
Makama recalls the incident happened a day after Eid-ul-Fitr. "Scores of houses and buildings were destroyed; big trees were cut off from their roots, and many vehicles were involved in terrible accidents," he says.
"The authorities said only two lives were lost, but to be honest, we saw many people dying. Some people were buried under the rubble of buildings."
North African countries and the Middle East also face this dilemma from time to time. Iraq, for example, was engulfed by sandstorms eight times between April to May 2022, leaving hundreds hospitalised and forcing flights to remain grounded.
How do sandstorms occur?
Scientists describe sandstorms as storms that usually occur when strong winds lift large amounts of sand and dust from bare dry soil into the atmosphere, transporting them to kilometres away. They are common weather hazards that happen in arid and semi-arid regions.
According to Dr Bindowo Aboubakari, a Cameroonian environmentalist focusing on climate change, storms usually happen following "horizontal thermal contrasts of the air".
This simply means a situation where two air masses, with distinct characteristics, including temperature and water content, "confront each other and cause winds that can be very violent". They usually leave huge destruction in their trail.
Mohammed Jafaru Dankwabia, deputy director of research at the Centre for Climate Change and Food Security in Ghana, says a cloud of wind that comes with dust moving faster at around 70-100km an hour "is something that needs to be worried about".
"Looking at the way this sandstorm is covering all of Africa from the north, the central, the west and several other places in the continent is concerning," says Dankwabia.
Globally, welfare losses from sandstorms are approximately $3.6 trillion, according to the World Bank.
What's causing sandstorms in Africa?
Experts blame these extreme weather events partly on the impact of climate change. Dr Bindowo Aboubakari, a Cameroonian environmentalist focusing on climate change, tells TRT Afrika that "global warming leads to an increase in the frequency and intensity of storms in Africa, which exacerbates other socio-economic stressors on the continent".
"Sandstorms are among the most violent and unpredictable natural phenomena," he explains.
Experts say the location of the affected countries and regions in the Sahara Desert also puts them at risk. The other factors include deforestation and land degradation, both of which leave vast swathes without cover.
"Most of us see climate change as being the result of natural causes," says Dankwabia. "But a lot of these causes are anthropogenic and the direct impact of human activities that people are not paying much attention to."
Mitigation measures
EcoMENA, a volunteer-driven initiative to create mass environmental awareness and foster sustainability worldwide, believes the effects of sand and dust storms can be reduced by using a number of health and safety measures, besides environment-control strategies. One of the measures, it says, is increasing vegetation wherever possible in Africa.
"Vegetation helps in stabilisation of the soil and creation of sand dunes that form windbreaks," it says.
Experts also believe using native plants and trees as buffer can reduce wind velocity and sand drifts while increasing the moisture content of soil at the same time.
African countries like Ethiopia have already started such initiatives. In July 2019, the government said 350 million seedlings were planted in a day as one of the highlights of its commitment to protecting the environment.
Many other African nations took the Ethiopian experiment of mass tree plantation to combat the adverse effects of climate change.
Dankwaiba advises African countries to increase the effort to plant more trees and guard them. "That will serve as a windbreak when the sun moves from the Sahelian region. Without these windbreaks, we will not be able to reduce the intensity of sandstorms," he says.
Building-design policies
EcoMENA points out that it is crucial to design buildings appropriately and conduct air-infiltration testing while commissioning them, especially in areas vulnerable to sandstorms.
Apart from investing in early warning systems, the World Bank says governments all over the world should design policies to mitigate the impact of sand and dust storms, both at national and regional levels.
The 15th World Meteorological Congress launched a sandstorm warning system in 2007 with the aim of enhancing the ability of countries to deliver timely and accurate sand and dust-storm forecasts through an international partnership of research and operational communities.
Education on climate change
Climate change expert Dankwaiba believes that education is the key in letting people know the effects of climate change. "The roadmap to changing this situation must not just be words, but must come with action," he says.
Although Africa is one of the worst-hit regions in terms of climate change, there is still little awareness about it among people across the continent. "Education is one of the things that we must prioritise to try and let people know the realities of climate change," says Dankwaiba.
"When people understand this, we will start a roadmap like reforesting our lost environment, desertification and the felling of trees, which has always been the anchor to this problem."
He calls for international efforts to mitigate the impact of sandstorms and other environmental hazards in Africa. "Without mitigating these climate change effects, it will definitely have an impact on global food security."
Personal protective measures
Experts say that apart from measures to protect the environment, people should also take personal protective measures in the event of sandstorms.
Aboubakari advocates simple measures such as wearing a face mask designed to filter small particles to protect the mouth, nostrils and eyes.
"It is good to look for shelter in the event of a sandstorm. Go to a high place since the largest concentration of sand is near the ground. This is crucial to avoiding being hit by objects carried by the wind," he advises.
