African leaders have called for a significant increase in climate financing for Africa, a continent often described as the hardest hit of the climate crisis, saying now is the time to act as time is ticking very fast.
The focus of Africa Day at the ongoing COP28 centred on amplifying the voice of African countries globally and providing a platform to highlight the continent’s challenges, opportunities and responses with leaders across the continent.
The day opened with a high-level session at which several African leaders called for ‘increasing climate finance and green growth in Africa’ – the theme of the event.
Executive Secretary of the United Nations Commission for Africa, Claver Gatete, emphasized key areas for leveraging resources and strategic collaborations to finance climate action and green growth, saying:
“Let’s make our priority investing in the deployment of the continent’s abundant renewable resources and processing its essential minerals. Let’s concentrate on developing innovative financing mechanisms such as the initiatives of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, which have enabled South Africa to issue three billion Rand in green bonds for renewable energy investments.
“Let us also develop African carbon credit markets, which provide significant opportunities for opening up green finance.” The African Development Bank, which launched a Climate Action Window to mobilize up to $14 billion to support adaptation in 37 low-income countries, highlighted the continent’s wealth.
“Everything that we have, we have in abundance,” AfDB President, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, told African leaders and representatives of governments as well as the private and public sectors.
Adesina made his point forcefully, saying: “Africa is home to 65 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land and has a key role to play in global food security. What Africa makes of agriculture will determine the future of the world’s food. Our determination is crystal clear: Africa will never again beg for food.”
He referred to the January 2023 Dakar Summit, which was the key to mobilising, to date, $72 billion for the agriculture and food sector in Africa.
Speaking on this special day at COP28, the president called on African countries to be proud of themselves: “Africa should always be celebrated. The Africa that we celebrate is that of the young people who are the continent’s present and future.”
The President of Senegal, Macky Sall, admitted: “African young people’s future is on the continent of Africa. Africa has a legitimate need for development and industrialisation to become part of global value chains, rather than being merely a reservoir of raw materials. We must create added value to provide our young people with jobs.”
African Union Commission Chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, took a more political tone. Denouncing the injustice of seeing the continent as a “minor polluter”, receiving “too little” in funding to fight the effects of climate change, he stressed that financial climate investment in Africa represented a “congruent share”.
“This investment must not diminish,” he said, insisting on the link between transition and adaptation.
“The Nairobi Declaration (adopted at the September 2023 Africa Climate Summit in Kenya) must remain our credo. Africa’s opportunity lies in speaking as one,” he said.
