The African Development Bank to double climate funding by 2025

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The African Development Bank (AfDB) plans to double its funding for climate resilience projects across the continent to $25bln by 2025, helping countries mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

This comes ahead of the group’s 57th annual meeting in Accra in May.

AfDB Group Secretary General Vincent Nmehielle said climate change will be the centre of discussion in this year’s annual meeting as it is currently the most pressing issue that impacts Africa’s socioeconomic development.“We know that climate change is a game changer for how development trajectory proceeds globally, and Africa, as usually, will have significant implications from the climate transitions that is happening,” added Prof Kevin Urama, AfDB’s chief economist.

In the last five years, AfDB has spent about $13bln on climate financing, mostly focusing on enabling countries to respond appropriately to climate change-related risks and calamities.

Building resilienceDr Kevin Kariuki, AfDB’s vice president for Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth said the bank is championing the efforts on climate change to support African countries build resilience for adaptation and mitigation.“Cognisant of the fact that Africa’s greatest interest is on adaptation, we dedicate at least 50 percent of our entire climate finance budget on adaptation,” he said.

According to AfDB, around 600 million people in Africa, almost half of the population, lack access to electricity and four in five rely on solid biomass for cooking, which results in over 600,000 deaths annually.“Ramping up climate finance flows for adaptation is critical to addressing the irreversible impacts of climate change,” AfDB said in a statement.“At present, adaptation finance accounts for only 10% of global climate finance. Overall, only about 19% of total international adaptation finance is programmed in Africa. Scaling adaptation actions and the required finance in Africa is imperative.”

From the last AfDB’s Africa Investment Forum held in March, investments worth $15.58bln were secured for energy and agriculture sectors, aimed at climate resilience and food security.