Africa Climate Summit: continent’s leaders ‘must dare speak unspeakable’

As Kenya is preparing to host the Africa Climate Summit next month, African leaders should be ready for serious and frank discussions about the climate change challenges that threaten to make large parts of the continent uninhabitable.
The event will take place alongside Africa Climate Week (ACW) 2023 and a pre-event, the 11th Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-XI) organized by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on 1-2 September. The Africa Climate Summit will focus on how African countries can collaborate and find solutions to the problems that climate change is causing for the continent. It is understood that the Summit will produce the ‘Nairobi Declaration on Green Growth and Climate Finance’ to drive action among AU member states and partners leading up to the United Nations Climate Change conference (COP 28) in November.
While Africa is experiencing the fewest benefits from the production of fossil fuels, countries in the continent also feel the worst effects of their burning. “While fossil fuels, by far the biggest source of emissions, have brought much harm and few benefits to Africa, climate agreements barely mention them,” notes Lorraine Chiponda, a facilitator of the Don’t Gas Africa campaign. In an article published in African Arguments, she calls on African states to try to come to a common position by prioritizing discussions during the Africa Climate Summit that will address the legacy of fossil fuels on the continent. According to Chiponda, “this inheritance is marred by a plethora of injustices including colonialism, energy apartheid, a distortion of African economies to single commodity-based economies, and the pollution of food and water systems.” To that end, she envisions the Africa Climate Summit as a unique “opportunity for African people to coalesce around such a common Pan-African agenda that does away with fossil fuels and its unjust legacy.”