The landmark Africa Climate Summit, which concluded Wednesday, adopted the Nairobi Declaration, calling for world leaders to rally behind a global carbon tax on fossil fuels, aviation and maritime transport.
The declaration also aims to reform the world financial system that forces African nations to pay more to borrow money.
The continent is acutely vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change, but leaders at the three-day meeting in Nairobi were eager to cast the continent not as a victim but as a long-ignored ally in the fight against global warming.
“Africa possesses both the potential and the ambition to be a vital component of the global solution to climate change,” the Nairobi Declaration stated.
However, the declaration also warned that unlocking Africa”s green growth on a scale that can contribute meaningfully to the decarbonisation of the global economy, requires a massive scale-up in funding.
It called on the international community to ease Africa’s crushing debt burden and reform the global financial system to unblock investment in clean energy.
Consensus is hard-won across Africa, a diverse continent of 1.4 billion people where some governments are championing a renewable-powered future while others defend their reserves of fossil fuels.
“At the summit, our shared understanding became clear: that Africa is not only the cradle of humanity, it is indeed the future,” said Kenyan President William Ruto, host of the inaugural Africa Climate Summit.
Africa attracted only 2% of global spending on renewables over the last decade, according to the leaders’ statement.
But it said the continent would need a “tenfold increase in the finance capital flowing” into renewables in the next seven years, some $600bn, to achieve the aim of boosting renewables from 56 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to at least 300 GW by 2030.
Efforts at the summit to up investment in renewables were given a boost on Tuesday, with the United Arab Emirates pledging $4.5bn to accelerate Africa’s switch to clean energy.
Ruto indicated that the total funding pledges for Africa had recorded $23bn during the summit.
Moreover, the Nairobi declaration called for “concrete action” on reforms that lead to “a new financing architecture that is responsive to Africa’s needs”, including debt restructuring and relief.
The Kenyan president stressed that the time is right to overhaul global financial systems that perpetually place African nations on the back foot.
Ruto demanded a fair playing ground for our countries to access the investment needed to unlock the potential and translate it into opportunities,” he said.
The African leaders also demanded the world’s wealthy polluters to honour their pledges, including to provide $100bn a year for clean energy and to help them brace for climate disasters.
