Population growth and development pressures in sub-Saharan Africa place increasing stress on the environment and accentuate the urgent need for appropriate environmental monitoring and management technologies. However, many areas lack the capacity to develop and implement these technologies.

At the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), UN University convened an official side event on “Capacity Development and Policy Needs for Environment Management Technology Development in Africa”. The seminar, chaired by Srikantha Herath, of the UNU Environment and Sustainable Development Programme, focused on the critical need to improve local capacities, particularly through higher education and policies that foster the development and application of environmental management technologies.

In a presentation on waste management in Africa, Stephen Simukanga, Vice Chancellor of the University of Zambia, said that solid waste management has been an serious problem in most African urban areas since the early 1980s and that toxic electronic waste is emerging as a ticking bomb for many African cities.

He listed the major obstacles to solving the problem: a low level of awareness of health issues among the general public; inadequate legal, institutional and administrative frameworks; lack of stakeholder involvement; and the lack of sufficient capacity and resources.

Turning to the growing level of air pollution in Africa from stationary sources (industry, forest burning, etc.), mobile sources (motor vehicles) and indoor sources (cooking), Prof. Simukanga said that the “atmospheric brown cloud” was causing reduced crop yields, high lead levels in plants and adverse impacts on human health.

In a presentation called “Knowledge, Institution and Innovation: Opportunities and Challenges in Sustainability Science”, University of Tokyo professor Masaru Yarime discussed the relationships among system components, innovations in knowledge-based economies and their determining factors, the effects of environmental regulations on technological innovation and industrial competitiveness, and possible win-win effects of innovation for environmental protection.

Professor Sanga-Ngoie Kazadi, of Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific University (Japan), ended the session with a presentation on “Customizing Global Knowledge for Sustainable Human Capacity Development in Africa”, covering a range of factors that will affect Africa, including a rise in the sea level, the local effects of climate change, extreme weather, the El Niño phenomenon and land cover changes.