AfDB to highlight Africa’s ‘green wealth’ at COP29

The African Development Bank (AfDB) is aiming to mobilise additional resources for climate action in Africa and launch a new approach to assessing African economies at COP29

The 29th edition of the United National Climate Change Conference has begun in Baku, Azerbaijan, as decision makers from across the globe gather to take on the ever-growing climate challenge. Dubbed the ‘finance COP’ the 2024 iteration will see countries negotiate fresh climate finance targets with trillions of dollars required for countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect citizens from the worsening impacts of climate change.

It is into this arena that the AfDB delegation is stepping into with the organisation outlining its agenda for the conference in a statement. In this, AfDB made note of the massive potential to drive clean energy access that the continent holds; an ironic fact against the <3% of global climate finance that is currently deployed to sub-Saharan Africa. This deficit hinders efforts to advance National Adaption Plans and Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

“There is no reason why Africa should be greenly poor,” remarked AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina. “Africa should be greenly wealthy by proper valuation of its vast contributions to global environmental services.”

To achieve this wealth, the president is advocating for recalibrating the GDP of African countries to reflect natural assets like forests and carbon sinks, a move that would reveal a significantly higher GDP and thus paint a better reflection of the continent’s environmental contributions. The conference will therefore serve as a platform for the introduction of ‘Measuring the Green Wealth of Africa’ initiative to redefine African economies.

Preliminary estimates from AfDB suggest that adjusting for carbon sequestration alone could boost Africa’s nominal GDP by US$66.1bn in 2022 with six Congo Basin countries accounting for nearly 64% of this. The significance of this initiative – which has received strong backing from participating countries such as Republic of Congo and Kenya – was explained by Adesina who noted, “That means that the countries can have larger headroom to take on more financing and invest them for the greening of their economies. Therefore, such a move is important for re-computing Africa's debt sustainability.”

AfDB utilising the COP29 platform to focus on climate finance should come as little surprise given the growing awareness that flows to Africa are falling well short. This point was recently reiterated by a new report by Climate Policy Initiative which exposed the 'grave financing gap' that continues to threaten Africa's long-term sustainable development trajectory. Discover more about this research by clicking here