Towards Africa Climate Week: Expectations and Key Issues

The anticipation is palpable. The hope is credible.

Growing up in the harsh, remote regions of Southern Somalia, Noor Mohammed is used to frequent bouts of droughts. She vividly remembers the time she buried her 5-year-old daughter along the way as she traveled to access relief food near the battered capital Mogadishu. To her, the long conflict between radical Islamist groups and the fledgling government forces supported by AMISSOM troops is not her biggest fear. Bullets and bombs do not tickle a nerve. Her main war is against hunger and malnutrition, the painful fear of dying from starvation.

“All my cows are dead. These days there is no rain, and I have to walk and find food to eat. What kind of life is this? I’m tired but there’s nothing I can do,” she says soberingly, with resignation clear in her tone and choice of words.

On September 4th, 2023, 13 heads of state from Africa and beyond, development partners, multilateral institutions, private sector, civil society organizations, academia, international governmental organizations, and youth groups will converge in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, for the African Climate Week.

There have been numerous climate change conferences in Africa and the world. The last edition of the COP, held on African soil, left many feeling betrayed. But this time it is different. From floods in South Africa and Chad that have killed hundreds, to drought and famine in the Horn of Africa, to wildfires and record temperatures in Algeria and Tunisia, extreme weather events have devastated the continent over the last year.

With no more time to waste, there is real optimism that the Africa Climate Week 2023 may be a catalyst for solutions to address climate change and Africa’s development reality. For Noor and millions of Africans becoming entrapped in the harshest punishments from Mother Nature, their dreams of a brighter future lie with a successful, action-oriented summit.

Enhanced climate finance inflows

It is one of the greatest injustices in the world that the continent that produces the least emissions is most affected by the impacts of climate change.

The toll of handling increased cases of famine, tropical cyclones, deforestation, declining agricultural yields, rising oceans, increasing desertification, and growing rural-to-urban migration is enormously burdening African nations. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, some countries are spending nearly 9 percent of their GDP responding to natural disasters caused by climate change.

Those challenges illustrate the urgent need to unlock climate finance. A recent study published by the Climate Policy Initiative suggests that Africa requires approximately $250 billion each year to address its combined climate goals. However, annual climate flows in Africa for 2022 were only $30 billion, or just 12% of the required amount. Considering that all 54 countries together have a GDP of $2.4 trillion according to the World Bank’s Annual Report of 2021, it implies that 10% of Africa’s current annual GDP needs to be mobilized above and beyond current flows every year for the next ten years.

At Africa Climate Week, policymakers will explore various innovative approaches to raising climate finance without reliance on aid. There needs to be concrete government commitments to easing the business environment through reforming regulative frameworks and supporting Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs). Key private sector players will also lay down significant commitments to increase investments in renewable energy projects.

Capital market analysts are also upbeat that for the first time, African leaders will explicitly endorse the rollout of green bonds as an alternative method of raising climate finance. During the Paris Summit in July, some leaders pushed for swapping debt for climate investments; and hopes are high that an action plan will be established in partnership with multilateral lending institutions.

As African countries push developed nations to meet their promises of contributing $100 billion to fund climate mitigation and adaptation, the summit should offer renewed impetus toward sealing loopholes that breed corruption and inefficiency. How can the money granted to Somalia’s government to invest in climate adaptation reach Noor and the rest of her colleagues living in the rural areas?

Declaration on human mobility         

Forget war and conflict, extreme weather events are now the biggest driver of migration in Africa. Prolonged droughts have forced communities to move far away from their homes to find either pasture for their cattle or food for their families. Take for example, Lake Chad – the largest freshwater lake in the Sahara Belt – which has lost 90 percent of its surface area, leading to five million climate-related refugees moving from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria as it shrinks.

At Africa Climate Week, leaders should acknowledge the presence of environmental migrants and lay out concrete policy proposals in line with the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration to mitigate their situation. They should also recognize the nexus between climate change and the various conflicts brewing in the Horn of Africa region and the Sahel.

Addressing human mobility will also require more investments in data collection and research to set up early warning systems. At COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres unveiled the “Early Warnings for All” Action Plan, aimed at investing $1.3 billion in the next four years to build early warning systems in developing countries and small island states.

“Vulnerable communities in climate hotspots are being blindsided by cascading climate disasters without any means of prior alert,” he warned during his keynote address.

Concerted push for loss and damages

At a recent meeting of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC), leaders endorsed a decision to participate in the legal proceedings initiated by the Commission on Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS) at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). The Africa Climate Week should feature in-depth conversations on climate justice and address the inequalities derived from being the biggest bearer of climate losses and damages.

Loss and damage differ from mitigation and adaptation in that it tackles how to help people after they have experienced climate-related impacts, while mitigation works on preventing it and adaptation on minimizing it. The Paris Agreement of 2015 created the intention to address loss and damage with technical assistance, but explicitly it did not include any liability or compensation for it by developed countries.

However, cometh COP 27, the most significant achievement was the agreement on a loss and damage fund. This proposal, albeit not new, aims to assist nations most susceptible to climate-induced disasters. At the African Climate Week, the African Union should roll out a clear legal framework for the fund’s structure, proposed donor countries, and robust distribution and accountability mechanisms.

Inclusion of Youth Voices

By now, it is a cliché to say the youth make up the largest demographic in Africa. But what is often ignored in policy conversations is the disproportionate impact of climate change on the young people in Africa. Extreme weather conditions have rendered agriculture profitless, and skyrocketing rural-to-urban migration coupled with a lack of investment in sustainable infrastructures, has fueled the expansion of informal settlements.

In recent years, young people have been at the forefront of climate advocacy, and we should expect more entrepreneurs to showcase their adaptation solutions, civil societies to push for youth inclusion in decision-making, and lobbying for the formalization of the gig economy.

“Our journey is not about surviving the challenges, it is about thriving amidst adversity,” Laurel Kivoya, the SADC Youth Ambassador, said during the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Conference on Human Mobility and Climate Change, held in Nairobi, Kenya.

Implementation of AfCFTA

Aside from unlocking finance and inclusion, the Africa Climate Week should reignite conversations on ratifying the African Continental Free Trade Agreement to enable the free movement of goods and persons across the 54 member states party to the deal.

A more vibrant regional market in food products through the AfCFTA will go a long way to addressing some of these challenges. Topographic and climatic differences across the continent mean there is great potential for more intra-African trade in food crops. For example, when Ethiopia suffered a drought in 2019, it increased imports from Sudan to cushion the effects.

An African Free Trade Area also promises to create opportunities for more investment and export of renewable energy, manufacturing, and the creation of millions of green jobs.

For all this to happen, policymakers must roll their sleeves and deliver credible successes to a 1.3 billion population eagerly waiting.

Citations

Afifi, Tamer, et al. Climate change, vulnerability and human mobility: Perspectives of refugees from the East and Horn of Africa. Bonn: United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), 2012.

Africa Policy Research Institute. How to ensure the AfCFTA propels Africa’s green transition. Retrieved August 16^th 2023 from

https://afripoli.org/how-to-ensure-that-the-afcfta-propels-africas-green-transition

Bielenberg, Aaron, et al. “Financing change: How to mobilize private-sector financing for sustainable infrastructure.” McKinsey Center for Business and Environment (2016): 24-25

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Loss and damages in Africa. Retrieved August 18^th 2023 from

https://archive.uneca.org/publications/loss-and-damage-africa