20/06/2026
Climate finance is one of the most consequential conversations happening in Africa right now and most people do not even know how it is threatening Africa's development outcomes.
On Monday I sat on a panel at a high-level policy discourse organised by my former organization, the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), for members of the Nigerian Senate Committee on National Planning & Economic Affairs, Nigerian policymakers, and fiscal experts.
The question was specific and important: how can climate finance be mobilised domestically, and how can those resources be managed to achieve real outcomes that people actually feel in their lives?
Here is where I stood.
Climate finance is first and foremost a development finance issue. Without adequate mobilisation, Africa does not just lose ground on climate impacts; it loses development gains it cannot afford to lose. But the current architecture of climate finance is keeping African governments in debt and dependent. The evidence us clear: about 87% of all the inadequate climate financing in Africa comes from outside the continent. Only 13% comes from African governments, African businesses, and African investors. And that is a dangerous position because the people providing those funds invest where the opportunity is for them; not where the real impact is for us. That is why innovative financing mechanisms that Africa controls are not optional. They are existential.
I made several specific recommendations. Well-targeted climate levies on multinationals operating on the continent, debt-for-climate swaps (an arrangement that not only reduces sovereign debt but simultaneously finances climate action through which up to 22 African countries currently in debt could benefit from), carbon markets, sovereign green bonds, diaspora bonds (following the model Burkina Faso used to bring capital from its own people abroad back home for development), and blended finance structures that combine all of these can, together, potentially raise between $69 billion and $193 billion every year from Africa's own resources. Not from outside.
Think about it ... Africa holds about 40% of the world's carbon absorption potential. There is a peatland in the Central African Republic that, alone, has the potential to absorb billions of tons of COโ, equivalent to offsetting emissions from oil and gas operations on the continent for 3 years.
We have the resources. What we need is the architecture, the governance, and the political will to finance our own carbon future.
But mobilising the money is only half the argument. The other half is making sure it is invested in ways that incorporate the local economy into the climate value chain so that we are not only addressing climate change but building businesses, creating opportunity, and ensuring that ordinary people feel the positive impact of climate financing in their daily lives.
And then, there is also the cross-border collaboration option where, for example, the governments of Ghana and Nigeria can raise climate finance to fund green projects that benefit both countries. This will be a fine way of settling our jollof wars.
That conversation is just beginning and in a couple of weeks, I will be releasing a dedicated series on Climate Finance that goes deeper into all of this. Stay green.
Grateful to Africa Centre for Energy Policy, Executive Director Benjamin Boakye, and my very own Maybel Acquaye for the invitation.
