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Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE has been selected among five Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) countries for piloting the climate change virtual knowledge management portal programme.

The trading bloc, which comprises 21 countries, has developed the portal intended to promote national and regional sharing of information on climate change.

In a statement, Comesa said the portal was activated a fortnight ago during a webinar that brought together member States and non-member countries.

“Comesa Secretariat through the climate change programme has developed a virtual knowledge management portal.

“It was developed by the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), a long-standing Comesa partner and will be populated with content by users (member States),” said the bloc.

The portal is expected to increase understanding of critical issues around climate change while providing a broad knowledge-hub to strengthen co-operation between technical organisations and member States.

“It will respond to the Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) pilot programmes co-ordinated by Comesa involving five member states: Eswatini, Madagascar, Seychelles, Uganda and Zimbabwe.”

It is also part of an initiative to organise key information in one place and enable the region to access and share knowledge with ease.

Speaking at the event, Comesa Climate Change programme manager, Ms Edith Tibahwa said a majority of member States are highly vulnerable to climate-induced risks.

These include crop failure and livestock losses due to prolonged drought and more frequent and severe floods and destruction of infrastructure as recently experienced in Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Malawi and Zimbabwe among others.