Against all odds for Climate Change action

Reem Mustafa, a female student at Kulu Institute in Sudan, heed to a call for applications to the 3rd Cohort of the 2 weeks, July Nairobi Summer School on Climate Justice(NSSCJ) way back before war broke out in Sudan.

Months later, she got a response that her application was successful, but with a disclaimer: that due to the prevailing circumstances in Khartoum, she would be considered for an online engagement for the classes as fellow students from all over Africa travel to attend the classes in person.

Reem, who hails from a village in Sudan but is a resident of Khartoum, took into consideration the current network instability in the area and poor internet services where she lives and resolved that attending the two weeks long classes online would be a gamble as she was not assured of daily internet and network stability to join in the long hours' classes.

“We have to ‘fight’ for these courses and such like programs. As I said, the climate change will not wait for the war or anything,” she highlighted.

Reem devised a risky and exhaustive solution; she traveled by road to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where she connected a flight to Kenya, a two days journey that ordinarily would have taken her three-and-a-half hours on a direct flight from Khartoum to Nairobi.

The call for a successful application to attend the training was also made to three others from her country who however opted to stay at home due to the unpredictable state of the nation.

Khartoum International Airport, which is the principal airport in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, according to Reem is currently on lockdown.

Citizen Digital caught up with Reem at the ongoing NSSCJ at the Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, and sort to know why the climate change knowledge is significant to her.

“I have come here to get knowledge and take back to my country for people, and I am also doing my master's in International Cooperation in Humanitarian Aid, and I need to link my research to climate change,” she replied.

According to Reem, Sudan too faces unpredictable climatic conditions crisis, and the ongoing war is a double tragedy.

“In Sudan, we have faced a lot of problems because of climate change, during rainy seasons we have faced floods, we have victims of climate change,” she explained.

At the end of the sponsored academic program, Reem is determined to go back to her country despite an offer to have some time in Kenya for the situation in Khartoum to calm. She maintained that since her family is in Sudan, she has to go back home and be with them. 

Many have died and countless displaced, exacerbating an acute humanitarian crisis that has seen the United Nations warn that Sudan is on the brink of a ‘full-scale civil war”, with Egypt offering to host a diplomatic meeting on 13th July 2023 to find a working solution to end the war lest it affects the entire Africa region.