African leaders urged to seize climate financing opportunities

GOOBJOOG NEWS | NAIROBI: Delegates at the ongoing Africa’s first climate summit in Nairobi, Kenya have been asked to seize the opportunities presented by the climate change crisis to attract investment to the continent.

Kenya is hosting the flagship climate conference designed to showcase Africa as a potential powerhouse for green energy as the world races against time to achieve its goal of slashing carbon emissions ahead of the November climate summit in the United Arab Emirates.

Kenyan president William Ruto says he wants the first African Climate Summit, running in Nairobi from Monday to Wednesday, to help “deliver African solutions.

According to Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi, the Executive Vice President of the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), African leaders are seeking to show that “Africa is not a victim but a critical player in solving the world’s climate crisis,” said Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi of the Africa, home to 1.2 billion people spread across 54 nations, is famously diverse, politically and economically.

Owusu-Gyamf however argues that African leaders have homed in on a set of climate priorities, from debt relief and low-carbon development to overhaul of the global financial architecture.

The hope is to generate momentum for a series of key international meetings leading up to COP28.

These include G20 negotiations in India, the UN General Assembly, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Marrakesh.

When Africa speaks “with one voice” on an issue, she said, it can be “impossible for the rest of the world to ignore.

Deals to be announced 

Organizers of the three-day summit say they anticipate hundreds of millions of dollars in deals to be announced as African leaders push for market-based financing instruments such as carbon credits and debt-for-nature swaps in a bid to mobilize funding that they say has been slow to arrive from rich-world donors.

“For a very long time we have looked at this as a problem. It is time we flipped and looked it from the other side. We must see in green growth not just a climate imperative but also a fountain of multi-billion dollar economic opportunities that Africa and the world is primed to capitalize,” Ruto told delegates on Monday during his opening speech.

Several speakers at the summit, however, said they had seen little progress toward accelerating climate financing.

Africa has received only about 12% of the finance it needs to cope with climate impacts, according to a report last year by the non-profit Climate Policy Initiative.

“There hasn’t been any success for an African country in attracting climate finance,” said Bogolo Kenewendo, a United Nations climate adviser and former trade minister in Botswana.

She said Africa’s struggles attracting capital persisted despite significant improvements to the investment environment in many countries, largely because of a perception the continent is too risky.

“We need a complete overshaul of the global financial infrastructure,” she said.

More than 20 presidents and heads of government are expected to attend the summit from Tuesday.