Ruto hosts delegates as Africa Climate Summit kicks off in Nairobi

NAIROBI, Kenya - The first Africa Climate Summit opens Monday in Nairobi- Kenya to highlight the continent that will suffer the most from climate change while contributing to it the least.

Significant investment in Africa's adaptation to climate change, including better forecasting, will be an urgent goal.

At the heart of every issue on the agenda, from energy to agriculture, is the lack of data collection that drives decisions as crucial as when to plant — and when to flee.

With the world far adrift of its goal of slashing carbon emissions and communities battered by extreme weather events, the November climate summit in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates will be dominated by clashing visions for energy.

President William Ruto says he wants the first African Climate Summit, running in Nairobi from Monday to Wednesday, to help "deliver African solutions."

The goal is to transform the continent into the source of the world's revolution in green power -- but to achieve this, it needs an influx of funding and help for its debt burden.

Ruto and other African leaders have sought to show that "Africa is not a victim but a critical player in solving the world's climate crisis.

Currently, Africa is home to 1.2 billion people spread across 54 nations, and is famously diverse, politically and economically.

The hope is to generate momentum for a series of key international meetings leading up to COP28.

These include G20 negotiations in India, the UN General Assembly, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Marrakesh.

The Nairobi meeting is expected to draw a number of African heads of state, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen UN head Antonio Guterres and other leaders.

A draft version of the final declaration seen by AFP puts the spotlight on Africa's vast renewable energy potential, young workforce, and natural assets.

Those include 40 percent of global reserves of cobalt, manganese, and platinum crucial for batteries and hydrogen fuel-cells.

Mohamed Adow, director of the think tank Power Shift Africa, said the conference was a chance to transform Africa into a place for making rather than extracting and rising above rivalries between China, the United States, and Europe.

"Just like we were able to leapfrog the fixed telephone line, this continent -- if it unites and uses this pivotal moment that we're now in -- we can effectively leapfrog dirty energy and become green leaders," he told AFP.

The draft declaration includes a provisional commitment to triple renewable energy potential across the continent from 20 percent in 2019 to 60 percent in 2030.

Kenya has taken the lead, with a pledge for renewables to make up 100 percent of its electricity mix by 2030.

But there are daunting challenges for a continent that is among the hardest-hit by climate impacts and where hundreds of millions of people lack access to electricity.

Despite hosting 60 percent of the world's best solar energy resources, Africa has roughly the same amount of installed capacity as Belgium, according to a commentary published last month by Ruto and the International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol.

A clean energy transition across the world's developing nations will be crucial in order to keep alive the Paris Agreement goal of capping global warming "well below" two degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, and 1.5C if possible.

To make that happen, the IEA says investment will need to surge to $2 trillion a year within a decade -- an eight-fold increase.

Currently, only about three percent of energy investments worldwide are made in Africa.

Globally, wealthy nations have yet to meet their pledge to provide, by 2020, $100 billion a year in climate finance to poorer nations, eroding trust that polluters will help vulnerable countries least responsible for warming to tackle the challenges of climate change.

Against this unpromising background, African countries are hamstrung by a mounting debt crisis.

According to the World Bank, of nine countries that in March were in debt distress, eight were in Africa.

Kenya, the host of the climate summit, is one of the few countries in Africa seen as having a relatively well-developed weather service, along with South Africa and Morocco.

Kenya has allocated about $12 million this year for its meteorological service, according to the national treasury.

In contrast, the US National Weather Service budget request for fiscal year 2023 was $1.3 billion.

The vast expanse of the 54-nation African continent is relatively unserved and unwarned.

“Despite covering a fifth of the world’s total land area, Africa has the least developed land-based observation network of all continents, and one that is in a deteriorating state,” the WMO said in 2019.

And because of a lack of funding, the number of observations by atmospheric devices usually used with weather balloons decreased by as much as 50% over Africa between 2015 and 2020, a “particularly serious issue,” the WMO said in a report last year.

Reliable weather services.

Fewer than 20% of sub-Saharan African countries provide reliable weather services, the report said.

“Weather stations are so far apart that their data cannot be extrapolated to the local level due to the varying terrain and altitude.”

Now, 13 of the most data-sparse African countries, including Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Congo, are getting money to improve weather data collection and sharing from a United Nations-created trust fund, the Systematic Observations Financing Facility.

An older funding mechanism with many of the same partners, Climate Risk, and Early Warning Systems, has supported modernizing meteorological systems in a half-dozen West and Central African countries.

And it's not just forecasting. As climate shocks such as Somalia's worst drought in decades become more common, better recording of weather data is a critical need for decision- making.

GAROWE ONLINE