Readiness Index for Climate Change Adaptation Database for Africa

The repercussions of climate change in Africa profound. The effects are recorded notably on agricultural and water systems across the continent. This data brief presents historical data and the first of its kind maps of readiness of Africa to climate change adaptation. The data are technically validated through a newly developed readiness Index (ClimAdaptCap Index). The Data and maps show that readiness for climate change adaptation is driven by the intensity of climate forcing and adaptive capacity. The climate data includes precipitation and temperature for the period 1991-2016. The latter were culled from the World Bank Climate Portal. The adaptive capacity data included proxies such as poverty and literacy rates for the same historical period. These were collected from the World Bank and Macrotrends. These climate data were normalized using the normalization function to enhance interpretation, comparison/fusion into the Index. Missing poverty and literacy rate data were estimated by linear interpolation of the poverty and literacy rate data. The readiness maps and data show that North and Southern Africa are the readiest for climate change while West Africa is the least ready and Middle and East Africa are in the middle. The data shows further that, readiness has a positive correlation with literacy rates and an inverse correlation with poverty rates. The data, maps and index can be adapted in different contexts principally around Africa.