Integral Frameworks of Climate Variability and Socio-Ecology Give Better Assessment of Mosquito-borne Diseases Dynamics in Africa

Abstract

Despite the significant impacts of climate variability on the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases globally, a lack of understanding of the fundamental relationship between them constitutes a major challenge. Although many parts of the world are at varying levels of increasing vulnerability to mosquito bites, Africa is particularly at the worst scenario of mosquito-borne disease transmission because of high severity of exposure to complex climate risks and low adaptive capacity. The study presents scientific progress on the extent of the impacts of climate on mosquito-borne disease studies in Africa, other factors influencing the disease transmission and the gaps in knowledge between 2020 and 2025. The paper was synthesized drawing on mosquito diseases transmission across sectoral chapters on human settlements, human population, ecosystem, water, livelihoods, health, and infrastructure. The result of studies shows that climatic factors (temperature, extreme events, and precipitation) play a dominant roles in the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases across the other earth system while biophysical factors (stagnant water bodies, poor urban sanitation systems, and deforestation), socioeconomic factors (low-income, poor urban infrastructure), and political factors (governance, legacy transformation challenges, and livelihood changes) exert complementary functions. Lack of high-resolution vulnerability integration in projection; empirical validation of adaptation assumptions; non-mortality health and social impacts exposure metrics; microscale urban exposure heterogeneity; validity of population projections in malaria hotspots; and long-term physiological acclimatization limits suggest the development of interdisciplinary studies integrating vulnerability indices to climate, population, and biophysical variables into a framework for the projection of mosquito-borne diseases distribution in the future.