Reuters Report Africa Climate Summit September 2023

1. Reuters Report- on Africa Climate Summit
Africa Climate week kicked off with a $450 million carbon credit pledge
from the United Arab Emirates on Monday as Kenyan President William
Ruto urged African leaders to seize the opportunity presented by climate
finance. However, several speakers see little progress being made towards
filing the climate financing hole.
An initiative to boost Africa's carbon credit production 19-fold by 2030
drew hundreds of millions of dollars of pledges on Monday as Kenyan
President William Ruto opened the continent's first climate summit.
In one of the most anticipated deals, the UAE committed to buying $450
million of carbon credits from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative
(ACMI).
The ACMI was launched at Egypt's COP27 summit last year. African
leaders are pushing market-based financing instruments such as carbon
credits, which allow polluters to offset emissions through activities like
planting trees or investing in renewable energy projects.

2. Kenya's President William Ruto during the opening ceremony of the Africa
Climate Summit (ACS) 2023 at KICC in Nairobi, Kenya, Sept. 4, 2023.
REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi

3. Slow progress
"For a very long time we have looked at this as a problem. It is time
we flipped and looked at it from the other side," Ruto told delegates.
"We must see in green growth not just a climate imperative but also
a fountain of multi-billion-dollar economic opportunities that Africa
and the world is primed to capitalize," he said.
Several speakers at the summit, however, said they had seen little
progress toward accelerating climate financing. "There hasn't been
any success for an African country in attracting climate finance," said
Bogolo Kenewendo, a United Nations climate adviser and former
trade minister in Botswana.
Many investors still saw the continent as too risky, Bogolo said.
Kevin Kariuki, a vice president at the African Development Bank, told
Reuters the deals announced on Monday were "very welcome" but
did not come close to filling the climate financing hole.
He said African states would push at the COP28 later this year for
the expansion of special drawing rights at the International Monetary
Fund that could unlock $500 billion worth of climate finance, which
could be leveraged up to five times.
Patricia Scotland, secretary-general of the Commonwealth of 56
countries, said the pledged funding was more than symbolic, as it

4. showed people understood the emergency, but that current climate
finance flows to Africa were still "shockingly low".

5. Other investments
Climate Asset Management - a joint venture of HSBC Asset
Management and Pollination, a specialist climate change investment
and advisory firm - also announced a $200 million investment in
projects that will produce ACMI credits.
Britain said UK-backed projects worth 49 million pounds ($62
million) would be announced over the course of the summit, and
Germany announced a 60-million euro ($65 million) debt swap with
Kenya to free up money for green projects.

6. What’s required?
The Climate Policy Initiative estimates that the continent
needs $277 billion annually to implement 'nationally
determined contributions' to meet 2030 climate goals.
Annual climate finance flows in Africa stand at only $30
billion for now.
Another recent report co-authored by executive secretary
at the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Vera Songwe,
concluded that multilateral development banks (MDBs)
yearly climate finance must triple within five years, from
$60 billion to $180 billion, to help developing economies
globally cope with global warming.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that loss
and damage costs due to climate change in its region are
between $289.2 billion to $440.5 billion and that a 1°C
increase in temperature is also associated with a greater
probability of conflict in the region of approximately 11%.
The International Monetary fund also estimates that 34 of
59 developing economies most vulnerable to climate
change, many of which are in Africa, are also at a high
risk of fiscal crises.