Africa faces escalating heat crisis as rising temperatures and energy poverty collide

Africa today is living through a climate emergency that is largely invisible. The Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE) new report, Africa: Too Hot to Cool? Agenda for Action, brings sobering evidence of how the continent is heating at an alarming rate.

Unlike floods or storms that rip through landscapes and leave behind dramatic wreckage, heat creeps in quietly, tightening its grip on people’s lives day after day. The air feels heavier, nights refuse to cool, homes become ovens, and the body cannot recover from the relentless strain.

Across the continent between 2000 and 2014, evidence shows a sharp rise in night-time temperatures and a deepening urban heat island effect.

This creeping heat is not just a health risk; it is reshaping economies and societies. Combined with humidity, it edges dangerously close to the wet-bulb threshold, a point at which even healthy individuals cannot survive outdoors. Hundreds of millions of Africans are already experiencing life-threatening heat stress. Labour productivity is falling, GDP losses are mounting, and poor adaptive capacity is worsening the impact. By 2030, West Africa alone is projected to lose the equivalent of nine million jobs simply because it is becoming too hot to work.

According to the CSE’s report, the crisis is stark in Africa’s cities. In Lagos, built-up areas expanded by 70 per cent between 2013 and 2022, while green cover shrank to just 13.8 per cent, driving land-surface temperatures in industrial zones such as Ikeja up to 34.4°C, and spreading persistent hot spots across dense districts like Mushin and Surulere.

Farther south, Johannesburg is witnessing even more extreme spikes: Satellite analysis shows built-up areas now cover 55.8 per cent of the city, with some hotspots, including Lanseria Airport and Stone Ridge, touching an astonishing 45–51°C in 2024, nearly 10°C higher than a decade earlier.

This growing crisis has triggered a rush for cooling. Fans, refrigerators and air-conditioners are becoming essential for survival. Yet Africa remains the region with the world’s lowest per capita access to modern energy.

Household electricity demand is expected to more than double by 2030, even though ownership of cooling appliances is far below the global average.

To make matters worse, the continent has become a dumping ground for old, inefficient air-conditioners from richer nations, machines that guzzle two to three times more energy than newer models and use ozone-depleting refrigerants. If this trade continues, it could add an extra 40 TWh of electricity demand by 2030.

Encouragingly, countries like Ghana have begun to ban these imports, and nearly 40 African nations are drafting national cooling action plans to regulate, push for efficiency standards, and promote better technologies. These are important steps, but cooling technology alone cannot be the answer.

The real challenge is larger: Africa needs comprehensive heat management strategies that reimagine cities, homes, and infrastructure for a hotter future. So far, only Sierra Leone has adopted a dedicated Heat Action Plan, which focuses on expanding green spaces, upgrading infrastructure, protecting vulnerable groups, and raising public awareness. But what Sierra Leone has attempted must spread rapidly across the continent. Heat resilience has to be woven into urban planning, building codes, and housing design.

Especially in dense settlements and affordable housing, designs must favour natural ventilation, shading, and materials that cool rather than trap heat. Otherwise, families risk being locked into an endless cycle of discomfort, energy poverty, and rising bills.

Even nature’s cooling allies such as green cover and water bodies are under siege. CSE’s assessment shows how lakes like Tanganyika, Malawi, and Chad are recording unusual warming in both surface and deep waters. Green areas, once vital lungs for cities, are shrinking and fragmenting. When patches of vegetation are broken into smaller, irregular fragments, they lose their cooling capacity. Instead of countering urban heat, they begin to warm themselves. This paradox, where lakes and parks also heat up, shows how deeply climate change and urban expansion are altering natural systems that once protected people.

Heat is the most underestimated climate hazard of our time. It does not roar like a cyclone or swell like a flood, yet its reach is far more insidious. It affects how we live, where we work, what we eat, and how our economies grow. Africa, contributing less than 10 per cent of global greenhouse gases, is paying one of the steepest prices, warming nearly 1.5 times faster than the global average. If action is delayed, this silent heat crisis will escalate into the defining public health emergency of the century.

What is needed now is urgent and decisive action: heat action plans in every country, stronger bans on inefficient appliances, ambitious building codes, and a massive push for green and blue infrastructure that can bring back the natural cooling power of ecosystems.

The story of Africa’s heat crisis is not only about rising temperatures. It is about resilience, justice, and the choices societies make today. If ignored, heat will deepen inequality and destabilise communities. But if addressed with urgency and vision, Africa can turn this crisis into an opportunity to build healthier, cooler, and more equitable futures.