Category: African Climate Policy

The loss of agricultural land, reduced water resources, and extreme weather events, among other factors, are creating fertile conditions for youth radicalisation in west Africa. Terrorist groups are exploiting these risk multipliers, often recruiting in the most vulnerable, impoverished, and marginalised areas. Following recurring military coups, ECOWAS is also unstable, lacking the authority, legitimacy and ability to support national climate responses. We spoke with Yero Sarr, a Senegalese climate activist to learn more.

Zimbabwe is at pains to repair the investor and carbon market damage wrought by last year’s statements, through the introduction of an Article 6 Strategy and Climate Change Management Bill.

Technology Needs Assessments (TNAs) are the primary instruments of the technology transfer process under the Paris Agreement. But a total of 21 funded projects over 15 years is reason enough to abandon these archaic assessments. The focus should instead be on the development and dissemination of technologies we already know are in high demand. We should also be having a broader conversation about the wider trade, regulatory and economic environment that undermines technology transfer.

With 19 African countries due to hold general or presidential elections this year, the People’s Vote on Climate Change highlights key priorities that citizens are looking for their governments to address. There is broad support for a transition away from fossil fuels in African countries, and most wanted greater action to avoid extreme weather events.

The African Group of Negotiators (AGN) can better position itself among agenda setters by investing its technical resources and diplomatic capital in influencing the climate regime’s institutional features. It should be challenging the system that penalises geographic and economic vulnerability, and should play a leading role in the intersection of human rights and climate change responses. By strengthening ties with the emerging economic powers of the Global South it can advance its agency in the negotiations.

Just Energy Transitions are not only for high emitting countries, they are also for countries with material extractives sectors, such as Zimbabwe. We interviewed Green Governance Africa’s Executive Director Nyasha Frank Mpahlo about the organisation’s work in Zimbabwe’s energy transition and their recent book on the topic.

The African public has a low understanding of what climate change is and its cause, with some of the most climate change literate groups currently located in the fossil fuel industry. As part of the African Union’s Education theme for 2024, we need to mainstream climate change literacy into targeted climate- vulnerable sectors and across government policy and decision makers.

At its 37th summit, the African Union’s climate committee, CAHOSCC, endorsed the establishment of a body to implement the Nairobi Declaration, adding to the already large swathe of climate committees and institutions. However, its guidance on the region’s key climate political topics was thin. As the AU joins the G20, it will need to formulate far more detailed and comprehensive positions on climate if it is to be taken seriously.