Was it climate change, conflict, or the wrath of God?
ago, before the great drought, Molu Golbowa looked into a goat’s intestines and foresaw the disaster to come. Some of his neighbours listened and sold their animals while they could. Others scorned his predictions. The old ways were idolatry, said a local sheikh.
Only half of Africans have heard of climate change, according to surveys by Afrobarometer, a pollster. That is not to say they are unaware of it. The signs are everywhere. The drought in the Horn of Africa that began in 2020 and is only now easing has claimed tens of thousands of lives. This is not politically charged climate scepticism, of the kind familiar in the West. Instead, locals treat anthropogenic climate change as just one more possibility in a world where indigenous beliefs, Abrahamic faiths and modern education coexist. Elders recall a time when they would pray to traditional gods and the rain would fall so fast that it would “wash away the footprints that brought you there”.