The Africa Working Group (AWG) on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) has been meeting bi-annually to take stock of the progress made regionally on the implementation of the intergovernmental agreements on Disaster Risk Reduction and the Africa Regional Strategy for DRR. At the 2014 Abuja meeting, the regional communities (including PeriPeriU – the 11-university consortium that had just become IRDR’s ICoE REaL) issued a strong call for a more robust underpinning of DRR action by science and technology.
The 7th extended Africa AWG meeting, organized jointly by UNISDR’s Regional Office for Africa (UNISDR AF) and the African Union (AU), convened in Yaounde, Cameroon, on 21-23 July 2015. The meeting brought together key government and civil society actors from across the continent for the first time after the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR). The overall objective of the meeting was to agree on concrete follow-up actions and political commitments to ensure effective implementation of the SFDRR in the continent.
In an effort to deliver on the January 2015 decision of the Executive Council of the African Union, the extended AWG meeting reviewed the programme of action and regional and national DRR programmes and their alignment with the SFDRR. The subsequent high-level meeting considered the outcome of the extended AWG technical meetings and adopted recommendations on concrete commitments to facilitate and support full implementation of the SFDRR across Africa.
PeriPeriU was represented by Prof. Mateugue Diack (Dean of Agri-Sciences, Gaston Berger University, Saint Louis, Senegal) and Prof. Samuel Ayonghe (Dean of Science, Buea Univ, Cameroon), who were both members of the IRDR / STMG delegations during the Sendai process.
