The famous "snows of Kilimanjaro" , almost 20,000 feet above sea level, the highest peak in Africa are melting. Kilimanjaro stands alone, 15,000 feet above the surrounding plains. It actually has three peaks, from three old volcanoes: Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira.Though only about 200 miles from the equator Mount Kilimanjaro has been capped by glaciers and snow for 11,000 years. The snow on Kilimanjaro shrinks and grows almost daily, but over the last century or more its overall trend has been a steady decline. People have farmed the lower slopes for at least 2,000 years. In the last century the mountain's population has grown rapidly— about tenfold between 1910 and 2000. These people raised cattle, fruits and vegetables and coffee.
Climatologist say that the ice on the top of the Kilimanajaro might disappear between 2015 and 2020: that's why Kilimanjaro became a poster child for global warming. But actually it is more complex than this: Scientists are no so sure that only climate change is to blame for the shrinking of the ice on Kilimanjaro.
Kilimanjaro's glaciers have been shrinking since at least the 1880s.

Why have these glaciers been shrinking? One factor is snowfall. In the 1880s the East African climate became much drier. Glaciers started shrinking, and lakes started dropping. Glaciers need fresh snow for at least two reasons: to feed them with fresh ice, and to provide a bright white shield between the ice and the sun.

Sunshine can melt ice even when the ambient air temperature is below freezing, by warming the surface of the ice. And the same decrease in clouds that meant less snow for the glaciers also meant more sunshine.

Sunshine can also remove ice at temperatures below freezing through sublimation. Sublimation is the mysterious process by which ice "evaporates" directly into water vapor without first passing through a liquid phase. It takes 8.5 times as much energy to sublimate ice than to melt it, but recent experiments suggest that a substantial portion of the ice loss on Kilimanjaro— perhaps two thirds— is through sublimation. A number of scientists have concluded that snow and sun were the initial, and the largest overall, factors in the retreat of these glaciers. The difficult question is what effect the local air temperature also had.
Those who have studied Kilimanjaro's glaciers agree that more research is necessary. They also agree that the Earth is warming, whether or not Kilimanjaro is good evidence for it. "We are entirely against the black-and-white picture that says it is either global warming or not global warming," said one scientist. "As a scientist I'm happy it's more complex, because otherwise it's boring." Do you agree? Do you like complex stuff?

Changes in extreme events, such as droughts and
floods, have major implications for numerous Africans .
About 25% of the contemporary African population
experiences high water stress. About 69% of the population lives
under conditions of relative water abundance . However, this relative abundance does not take into
account other equally important factors such as access to clean
drinking water and sanitation, which effectively reduces the
quantity of freshwater available for human use. Despite the
considerable improvements in access to freshwater in the 1990s,
only about 62% of the Africanpopulation had access to improved water supplies in 2000.