Expectations are high as policymakers meet in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss solutions to the climate crisis in Africa, where millions are already grappling with its impacts.

Development Diaries reports that the Africa Climate Week (ACW) 2023 provides a platform for policymakers, practitioners, businesses and civil society to exchange on climate solutions, barriers to overcome and opportunities realised in different regions.

Stakeholders are expected to discuss the effects of climate change as they relate to energy systems and industry; cities, urban and rural settlements, infrastructure and transport; land, ocean, food and water; and societies, health, livelihoods, and economies.

Africa has endured some of the most severe consequences of the climate crisis despite contributing the smallest share of global greenhouse gas emissions of all the world’s regions, yet the continent has accessed some of the least interventions for mitigating these shocks.

For instance, in Angola, drought has forced pastoralist communities to abandon their homes in search of food and water. Also, successive tropical storms and cyclones have led to homelessness and deaths in Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

Only 2.4 percent of key global climate funds can be classified as supporting child-responsive activities on the continent, despite more than a billion children being at extremely high risk of the impacts of the climate crisis.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, at least 1.85 million children in sub-Saharan Africa were left displaced within their countries by climate shock at the end of 2022.

Also, the World Bank has predicted that the climate crisis will create 85.7 million climate migrants in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. 

Development Diaries calls on African leaders at the gathering to come up with a long-lasting climate action to safeguard the continent.

Photo source:  Rod Waddington