Kenya President William Ruto speaking at the ‘Africa Climate Summit’ at Kenyatta Congress Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.
(Credit: Andrew Kasuku/Anadolu Agency)
Africa’s first climate summit took place in Nairobi, Kenya, on September 4-6 during Africa Climate Week and focused on finance and green development. The summit brought together regional leaders and policymakers, young people, Indigenous groups, civil society, academics, and the business community to establish Africa’s unified position ahead of the upcoming global climate conference, COP28, set to take place in Dubai in late November.
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#AfricaClimateSummit marks a monumental milestone as the Nairobi Declaration has been unanimously adopted with resounding acclamation! The collective commitment as different Heads of State and Goverments shines brightly focused on our vast potential and resources towards the… pic.twitter.com/rnv4KDWBnz
— Africa Climate Summit (@AfClimateSummit) September 8, 2023
African nations are disproportionately affected by climate change despite contributing only 4% to global carbon emissions. The continent is warming faster than the rest of the world. Prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa and recent natural disasters—an earthquake in Morocco and major floods in Libya—have highlighted the continent’s vulnerability and potential for swift and tragic loss of life.
The summit’s slogan was “Driving Green Growth and Finance Solutions.” It focused on five areas: energy systems & industry; cities; urban & rural settlements, infrastructure & transport; land, ocean, food, and water; and societies, health, livelihoods, and economies.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres attended the summit and spoke about debt relief mechanisms, stating, “African countries pay four times more for borrowing than the United States and eight times more than the wealthiest European countries.” He called for “effective debt relief mechanisms that support payment suspensions, longer-ranging terms, and lower rates.”
In the Nairobi Declaration, the summit’s final document, African leaders sought a shift in loan agreement terms to allow for decreased chances of default and spiralling debt. One bullet called for “a comprehensive and systemic response to the incipient debt crisis outside of default frameworks to create the fiscal space that all developing countries need to finance development and climate action.”
Kenya’s President William Ruto, who led the conference, discussed how Africa is poised to become a leader in renewable energy generation. The Great Rift Valley serves as a significant source of geothermal power in the region. However, given that only around 16 nations in Africa boast fossil fuel endowments and many are keen on developing those resources, the declaration left out mention of fossil fuels apart from coal.
One of the panel sessions, ‘Harnessing Africa’s Renewable Energy Potential,’ discussed Africa’s vast untapped resources and underdeveloped energy infrastructure. African Development Bank leader Akinwumi Adesina gave the keynote address and touched on the continent’s vast solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, and wind potential. During the session, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), Simon Hartford, mentioned the need for large-scale storage capacity for renewable energy, as “reports indicate that electricity losses in Africa during distribution and transmission amount to $5 billion annually,” according to the ADB Group.
Africa is also endowed with a variety of critical minerals that are essential to the global renewable energy transition. At a panel on critical minerals, Gareth Phillips, Manager of Climate and Environmental Finance at the African Development Bank, said that, according to the Paris Climate Agreement, “all money invested in due course is going to have to be invested in activities that lead to low carbon and low climate resilient development… It is going to get increasingly harder to raise money for fossil fuel-intensive investments.”
Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s speech described the importance of harnessing the value of Africa’s abundant critical minerals and ensuring that they are converted into intermediate and finer products within Africa. Tanzania boasts endowments of cobalt, nickel, graphite, and cobalt.
Countries sent delegates, each of whom gave a short speech outlining their nation’s perspective on the climate crisis, pointing to specific vulnerabilities for their people and their aims in tackling it. Sierra Leone’s President, Maada Bio, warned of how “calamities like landslides and floods have become hauntingly regular” in his country and that a “surge in pests and diseases is another testament to our enduring imbalance.”
The Vice President of Namibia, Nangolo Mbumba, outlined how irregular rainfall patterns were leading to water scarcity and affecting agriculture, industry, and hydropower generation.
He warned of the possibility that such scarcity could lead to social unrest. Irregular rainfall patterns, lower agricultural yields, and concerns over water access were echoed by leaders as key issues that could lead to the mass displacement of their populations. Given how young much of Africa’s population is, leaders are concerned about employment opportunities and seek green growth and climate mitigation strategies to allow their economies to support their people and prevent social unrest and mass migrations.
The summit’s final document totalled eight pages and acknowledged Africa’s vulnerable place in the climate crisis as well as its agency in tackling it. The declaration recalled previous commitments made by developed nations and financing institutions and sought debt relief and greater African representation in the governance of multilateral banks.
It also called for support for a global carbon tax and a re-evaluation of funding mechanisms. Many of Africa’s raw materials for important technologies are transported outside of the continent for processing, and the declaration called for “shifting the energy-intensive primary processing of Africa’s raw material exports to the continent, also to serve as an anchor demand for our renewable energy and a means of rapidly reducing global emissions.” The declaration also reiterated a variety of agreements already signed by participating nations.
While the African Climate Summit was hailed as a success by hosts and speakers, some others criticised the event.
The African climate civil society network claimed that the Nairobi Declaration was “weak and inadequate and… that old colonial attitudes from the global north continue to dictate Africa’s climate policy.”
Greenpeace asserted that the declaration’s focus on carbon markets, credits, and tech solutions replacing the need to phase out fossil fuels “are being marketed as African priorities when in reality they will embolden wealthy nations and large corporations to continue polluting Africa.” The disproportionate focus on coal rather than all fossil fuels also garnered concern over the declaration’s seriousness.
The continent of Africa is growing in global importance, yet the countries within it still find that their voices will be heard louder at multilateral conferences when they are united. Africa Climate Week ended just as a 6.8-magnitude earthquake impacted Marrakesh, Morocco, and surrounding areas.
Then, on September 12, Storm Daniel hit Libya and caused severe flooding, leaving an estimated 11,300 dead. Such events spotlight Africa’s vulnerability to natural disasters and the need for more resilient infrastructure. African Climate Summit leaders expressed their intention to make the conference a biennial event to keep climate change at the top of African leaders’ agendas and to seek collective green development and financing for greater resilience amid the inevitable shocks brought on by climate change.
Sarah Sakeena Marshall,
American University’s School of Intl Service,
The Muslim News Environmental Columnist
