Africa Receives 10th of Climate Financing as COP27 approaches

By Nneka Nwogwugwu 

As the international climate community prepares to attend COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, new analysis have showed how the  host continent is in terms of attracting the finance it needs to adapt to catastrophic global warming, build renewable energy plants and enhance its carbon-absorbing ecosystems.  

At $30 billion, annual climate finance flows in Africa are just 11% of the $277 billion needed, according to research published Wednesday by the Climate Policy Initiative, a US-based nonprofit. 

The research was commissioned by FSD Africa, an organization funded by the UK government, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a charity set up by billionaire hedge fund activist Christopher Hohn, and UK Aid. 

It’s the first to map climate finance flows in Africa by region, sector and source, and captures available data for 2019 and 2020.

Top of the agenda at the November UN climate summit in Egypt, known as COP27, will be demands from developing nations for more funding from rich countries to adapt to global warming and a financing mechanism to help them cope with natural disasters and extreme weather events.

 In 2009, developed countries committed to $100 billion of assistance for poorer nations every year. They have fallen significantly short of that target. 

Africa accounts for a tiny fraction of the world’s carbon emissions but its nations will be among the hardest hit by global warming, already manifested globally in disasters ranging from heat waves in Europe to droughts in the Horn of Africa and floods in Pakistan.

“A report such as this allows us to measure whether the commitments of developed countries to provide finance to developing countries, is indeed being delivered,” said Valli Moosa, deputy chairman and effective head of South Africa’s Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission, in a statement.

Private sector finance in particular remains too low, the Climate Policy Initiative said in the report. Companies and commercial financial institutions contributed just 14% of total climate finance received in Africa, much lower than in other developing regions.

“Public and private actors must act with scale and speed to help bring Africa’s climate goals to fruition,” said Barbara Buchner, global managing director of the Climate Policy Initiative. “Africa offers a wealth of climate-related investment opportunities” and “the social, economic, and environmental benefits which could be realized are even greater,” she said.