Covering for RFI English, sadly not from Nairobi, my city in Africa (where I live for 18 months)
4 September 2023
High hopes for lucrative green deals at Africa's first climate summit
Africa's first climate summit opens in the Kenyan capital this Monday as the continent looks to limit the devastating impact of global warming by spearheading efforts for green growth and shoring up finance for developing countries on the frontline of climate change.
Despite accounting for about 3 percent of global carbon emissions, African countries are increasingly exposed to the impact of extreme weather linked to climate change, highlighted by the Horn of Africa's worst drought in decades.
More than 20 African heads of state and government and 20,000 delegates from around the world, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, are joining the summit, which runs until 6 September in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
"This summit will in priority look at climate financing," Crisis Group expert Nazanine Moshiri told RFI.
As the group's senior analyst on climate, environment and conflict, she expects heads of state to make a strong statement on investment in green growth.
Moshiri also hopes that the countries in the deepest crises, like Sudan, Somalia and the coup-hit Niger and Gabon, won't be forgotten.
Large investments
Deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars are expected to be struck during the summit, organisers say. This includes progress on nature-based investments, clean energy production and climate adaptation efforts.
"We are anticipating deals from $1 million all the way to hundreds of millions of dollars," summit chief Joseph Ng'ang'a told Reuters.
Several nature-based deals involving African countries, which help resolve the dilemma of who foots the bill to combat climate change impacts, have already been announced in recent months.
In June Portugal said it would swap $153 million worth of Cape Verde's debt for nature investments, while Gabon completed a deal this month to buy back $500 million of its international debt and issue an eco-friendly bond of equal size.
Droughts, floods and other disasters
African countries have been severely affected by changing weather patterns and increasingly suffer from droughts, floods and storms.
Most regions are affected, especially the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.
"Human-caused climate change has made agricultural drought in the Horn of Africa about 100 times more likely," a report by the World Weather Attribution found in April.
Dry seasons are becoming longer in parts of the Sahel, and rainfall more intense and erratic, meaning droughts and floods are set to intensify, according to a report by the US International Rescue Committee.
Niger has been hit hard by climate change, losing 100,000 hectares of arable land each year to desert.
A comprehensive analysis examining the wealth of nations and their dependence on fossil fuels also concluded poorer countries would be most hurt by a rapid move away from oil and gas, even risking political instability.
Thinking ahead of COP28
African governments are also gearing up for December's Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, when they will be pushing for the realisation of financing commitments made in previous climate summits by richer nations.
Last year's Cop27 in Egypt agreed to create a loss and damage fund for developing countries, but it has not yet materialised.
Ali Mohamed, Kenya's special envoy for climate change, said the recognition of the Congo forest basin as a key carbon sink was a main objectives heading into Cop28.
"We are holding this summit not to continue repeating the same messages. We are holding this summit for Africa to present solutions to the challenges," he said.
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5 September 2023
UAE pledge a record $4.5 billion in clean energy investments in Africa at
Nairobi's Climate Summit
Already
described as "Africa's moment", the Climate Summit has already
brought a record pledge from the Emirates and a strong statement from the UN
chief, Antonio Guterres.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) pledged $4.5 billion in clean energy investments in Africa on Tuesday at the landmark Africa Climate Summit, which opened on Monday in Kenya's capital Nairobi.
The pledge is most significant
so far, coming from the UAE which will also host the COP28 summit in Dubai in November-December.
The investment would "jumpstart
a pipeline of bankable clean energy projects in this very important
continent", Sultan Al Jaber, head of the UAE's national oil company ADNOC,
of government-owned renewable energy company Masdar, and president of the COP28
climate summit.
Jaber also said a consortium including
Masdar would help develop 15 gigawatts of clean power by 2030.
He called for a "surgical
intervention of the global financial architecture that was built for a
different era", urging institutions to lower debt burdens.
International
'responsibilities'
The three-day Nairobi summit has
attracted heads of state, government and industry, including leaders from
Mozambique and Tanzania, as well as United Nations head
Antonio Guterres,
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and US climate envoy John Kerry.
This Tuesday morning, the UN
Secretary-General urged the international community to help make Africa "a
renewable energy superpower".
"Renewable energy could be the
African miracle. But we must make it happen," Guterres told the summit,
asking leaders of the Group of 20 major economies in particular, who are meeting
in India on the weekend, to "assume your responsibilities" in the
fight against climate change.
Before the summit opened, Crisis Group senior
analyst on climate, environment and conflict, Nazanine Moshiri, told RFI English
that experts also hoped that the disasters linked to climate crisis wouldn't be
forgotten, especially the need for conflict resolution in region like the Horn
of Africa and the Sahel, profoundly impacted by the changes.
A coalition of civil society groups
has been urging Kenya's
President William Ruto
to steer global climate priorities away from what they perceive as a
Western-led agenda that champions carbon markets and other financial tools to
redress the climate crisis.
Green investments and shift in perception
The summit is aimed at showcasing
the continent's potential as a green powerhouse and focused on drawing
investment to projects to fight global warming.
Ruto has sought to use this Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi to shift the narrative on the region, presenting the clean energy transition as a unique opportunity for Africa.
He believes it can attract the
financing to realise its potential.
Ruto said trillions of dollars in
"green investment opportunities" would be needed as the climate
crisis accelerates.
His goal is also to bring together
African leaders to define a shared vision for green development on the diverse
continent of 1.4 billion and set the tone for a flurry of international
diplomacy leading up to the COP28 meeting.
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