What Africa’s climate summit means for investment in the continent’s future

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• William Brangham:

  Africa is responsible for just two to 3 percent of global carbon emissions, but it is the continent most vulnerable to climate change. Despite this, African nations receive only 3 percent of global dollars committed to mitigating and adapting to climate change.

  This week, leaders held the first Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, where climate investment ranked high on the agenda. Ali Rogin has more.

• Ali Rogin:

  To discuss the outcome of the three day summit, I'm joined by Caroline Kimeu. She's the East Africa Development Correspondent for The Guardian magazine, and she covered the event. Caroline, thank you so much for joining us.

  The slogan of the Africa Climate Summit was Driving Green Growth and Finance Solutions. Here's what the host, Kenyan President William Ruto, had to say.

• President William Ruto, Kenya:

  We demand a fair playing ground for our countries to access the investment needed to unlock the potential and translate it into opportunities.

• Ali Rogin:

  The climate crisis has so many dimensions. Why did this summit focus on finance?

• Caroline Kimeu, East Africa Global Development Correspondent:

  Well, Ali, what we're seeing across Africa is that many countries are struggling with debt at the moment. So a number of countries are having to choose between key priorities. I'm talking about education, health versus climate action. And by climate action, I'm talking about even the response to the different disasters we're seeing happening across the continent whether it's flooding we've seen in western Africa, cyclones in southern Africa, the prolonged drought that has hit the Horn of Africa region.

  So we're seeing countries having to navigate a very delicate and, you know, very tight balance as far as how financing goes. Right now, African countries are having to take on funding at interest rates that, you know, the sense is that it's very high in terms of repayment timelines. There's less flexibility on that front.

  So I think that what African countries are trying to push for is something that will leave the countries with breathing room, ultimately just to be able to have more financing available to them as they deal with different issues.

• Ali Rogin:

  Can you tell us a little bit about the conversation that took place at the summit about the rich natural resources all over the continent of Africa? What was the conversation around taking advantage of all those natural resources in terms of furthering energy transition?

• Caroline Kimeu:

  Right. One of the things that President William Ruto highlighted at the beginning of the summit is that Africa, as he said, does not have all of its assets on its balance sheet, essentially that they're not reflected and, you know, it should — that the continent should be positioning itself in a way to be able to get benefits from some of its natural resources. And so that was one side of things.

  The question of what exactly does a just energy transition look like for Africa has been different for different countries. You know, there are countries, let's say there are around 16 countries that have those fossil fuel endowments, but the other majority of countries do not.

  So there are countries like Kenya, Ethiopia that are pursuing the renewable energy pathway quite aggressively. Ethiopia, for instance, is like 100 percent dependent or 100 percent renewable energy. And the sense is, how can more countries move towards this?

• Ali Rogin:

  The topic of carbon markets is a big debate right now. The notion of companies and countries being able to purchase carbon credits that allows them to continue emissions while investing in green activities elsewhere. Take us inside that debate as it played out at the summit.

• Caroline Kimeu:

  From the leadership side, there's wide support for the scaling up of the carbon markets under the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative that was launched at COP27 last year. But essentially what we are seeing from the campaigner side is a sense of opposition to these markets. They say that it will allow for the extraction of Africa's resources and also that it's not the right way to go when the world is tried to reduce emissions, that essentially what the carbon market schemes offer up is an imaginary commodity for essentially emissions that we do need to be reducing at this time globally.

• Ali Rogin:

  There were also many protesters climate campaigners outside the summit. What were their main points of protest?

• Caroline Kimeu:

  Top of the list were that fossil fuels need to be an issue that is on the agenda. There was a hesitance to go in that direction because obviously, if you're talking about building consensus among African countries ahead of big summits like COP28, that's going to be hard no matter which way you dice it.

  And one of the main things, I think, to avoid huge areas that could only bring more division among African countries rather than build consensus, I actually think that could have informed dropping fossil fuel off of the agenda as far as the main issues that they highlighted. There was the fossil fuel projects issue, the carbon markets issue, and concerns around fights on renewable energy projects not being addressed.

• Ali Rogin:

  Caroline Kimeu with the Guardian magazine. Thank you so much for your time.

• Caroline Kimeu:

  Thank you very much, Ali.