“What I think is important for our partners and our leaders is to assure that you are able to attract young people into agriculture. If we don’t attract young people, before we know there’ll be nobody in agriculture,” Dlamini-Zuma said. “We have to look at agriculture as a way of investing in people.”

During the same event, Second Lady of the United States, Jill Biden, spoke about women and the contribution that they make to agriculture, often passing down skills and farming as a whole to their families. Without the necessary protection against climate change, this will be a harder task to accomplish.

Ending Emergency Assistance Through Policy

“The goal is simple; create the conditions where emergency assistance and intervention is no longer needed. That ultimately is how we will prevent the kind of suffering that I saw in Somalia three years ago,” Biden said sharing a story from her personal journey to Africa.

“African nations have made impressive progress in farming techniques and growing food. But through no fault of their own, were hit by the worst drought in 60 years.”

For months this drought, which hit Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia in 2011, caused more than 10 million people to face the worst famine situation in 20 years, according to NASA.

The following year, The World Bank reported that 17 million West Africans dealt with the same food insecurity impacts — a result of drought, which was linked to climate.

While climate change cannot easily be controlled, transitioning to clean energy and a solid energy policy, Kerry said, is what will help balance out and hopefully eradicate Africa’s pressing climate effects.

“The fact is that good energy solutions are climate solutions. The solution to climate change is energy policy,” he said. “Africa can be a clean energy beacon for the world. Energy prosperity can actually replace energy policy.”