As increasingly frequent droughts and devastating floods are affecting agricultural productivity, leaving millions of people food insecure in Africa amid a lack of climate finance, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has committed USD 11 billion to support various climate-resilient and infrastructure projects in rural areas. Climate change-induced humanitarian emergencies are materializing in every corner of the world. Often, more frequently than predicted.
Over the past few years, many countries have been experiencing extreme weather events almost every month. Poor countries like those in Africa emerged as the worst affected, bearing the brunt of climate change. Africa warmed faster than the rest of the world, according to a report released last year by theWorld Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The Horn of Africa, as well as Southern and Northwest Africa, suffered from exceptional multi-year droughts recently, while other African countries reported significant casualties due to extreme precipitation leading to floods in 2023. James Kinyangi, coordinator of the Climate and Development Special Fund and the Climate Action Window atAfDB, said they are providing funding for various climate adaptation and mitigation projects across Africa. “Out of that, close to half was mainstream climate finance.
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Of the nearly USD 5 billion that went to climate finance, nearly 65 percent was adaptation finance. The remaining was mitigation.” Kinyangi said they have a mainstream of climate finance for climate action in their main portfolio, making sure that all of the lending of the bank responds to climate action. “We also screen our projects.
Now, nearly 100 percent of all new approvals of the bank are mainstream with climate action. They are climate-informed designs of projects,” he said. Kinyangi, an AfDB early warning expert, says they also have various special funds and trust funds that respond to climate change.
“One that is visible is through our major constitutional lending window, the African Development Fund. We have created the Climate Action Window, which has mobilized a total of USD 500 million as climate finance,” he said. “That has now been programmed for 37 low-income African countries that benefit from the resources of the African Development Fund.
We have about 41 projects that are adaptation, and we have another 18 projects that are mitigation.” The cost of climate adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa would be between USD 30 and 50 billion annually over the next decade, according to the WMO. This is a huge blow to a continent where 118 million extremely poor people have a daily income of less than USD 1.90 per day. If adequate climate funding is not secured in time, farmers in the rural areas will be poorer by 2030 as national budgets continue to be diverted.
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