The irony is hard to miss. Going by each country’s share of cumulative historical emissions from fossil fuels, sub-Saharan Africa has contributed just 1.9 per cent of global emissions. And most of that came from South Africa (1.3 per cent), while the remaining 48 countries together contributed just 0.6 per cent. Yet, the region is a hotspot of the planetary climate emergency. According to an analysis by Washington DC-based Brookings Institution, seven of the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries in the world are in Africa. As the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in August 2021, poignantly put it: “Over the past 60 years, Africa has recorded a warming trend that has generally been more rapid than the global average...the climate has changed at rates unprecedented in at least 2,000 years.” In fact, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), one in every three deaths from extreme weather, climate or water-related stress in the past 50 years occurred in Africa.
The year 2024 was either the warmest or second-warmest on record for Africa, accompanied by devastating floods, droughts and marine heatwaves, states WMO’S “State of Climate in Africa 2024” report, released in May 2025. Estimates suggest that the continent is highly likely to cross the 1.5°C warming threshold by 2040, accelerating devastating impacts on Africa’s agriculture-dependent populations, who are already experiencing significant losses due to climate change.
The Climate Policy Initiative, an independent non-profit research group based in California, US, estimates that implementing Africa’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—the climate action plans submitted by countries to the UN to curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts— will cost around US $2.8 trillion between 2020 and 2030. Adaptation measures account for just 24 per cent of this cost, despite the continent’s high vulnerability to climate impacts. Worse, amid an escalating climate crisis, many African countries are grappling with severe economic and financial hardships. This has made them increasingly dependent on borrowings from foreign governments and multilateral institutions, creating a vicious circle that hinders investment in climate resilience, adaptation and low-carbon transition. Often, countries are forced to borrow even more for disaster recovery, which further mounts their debt burden. This has dire consequences. African nations are projected to spend nearly 30 per cent of their revenue on servicing debts in 2025, according to the “World Economic Situation and Prospects” report, published in January 2025 by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), in collaboration with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the five UN regional commissions. Close to 25 African countries have net interest payments exceeding 10 per cent of their revenue, the report highlights.
Despite the finance crunch, countries are adopting policy measures and developing programmes to both adapt to and mitigate climate change. From rolling out national strategies to achieve net-zero in carbon emissions to harnessing indigenous knowledge...
This article is part of the cover story Fighting chance originally published in the October 1-15, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth