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Africa’s, the world’s second-largest continent, is a ‘hotspot’ of the planetary climate emergency, according to the latest edition of New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)’s annual publication.
Seven of the 10 most climate vulnerable nations in the world are located in Africa, noted State of Africa’s Environment 2025 citing an analysis by Washington DC-based Brookings Institution.
The document, released in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on September 18, 2025, also pointed to what the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in August 2021 had said: “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, every third death (or 35 per cent) in the world from extreme weather, climate or water stress in 50 years was in Africa, according to WMO. According to IPCC regional projections, the average annual maximum temperature in northern and southern Africa is likely to be close to 4°C above normal,” the document read.
Africa’s land as well as the seas surrounding the continent are warming, according to State of Africa’s Environment 2025.
It stated that last year was the warmest or second-warmest year on record for Africa along with devastating floods, droughts and marine heat waves, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)’s “State of Climate in Africa 2024” report, released in May 2025.
The average annual surface temperature across Africa was around 0.86°C above the average annual surface temperature between 1991 and 2020. The strongest warming was in North Africa, which was 1.28°C above the 1991-2020 average. North Africa is the fastest warming region in the continent. The El Niño event of 2023-2024 was partly to blame for the warming and extreme weather, along with global warming and consequent climate change.
Even more worryingly, most models show that temperatures across the continent by century-end under the “business-as-usual” scenario will be about 3-6°C higher than the average temperature observed at the end of the 20th century, which is already close to being 0.5°C more than average temperatures at the beginning.
The maximum change in temperature by the end of the century is likely to occur in the northern and southern parts of the continent. But the fastest rate of change is expected to occur on the western side.
Meanwhile, sea surface temperatures around the continent, especially in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Mediterranean Sea are also record high.
According to WMO, almost the entire ocean area around Africa was under marine heat waves (MHWs) of “strong, severe or extreme intensity during 2024”.
MHWs are extended periods of extreme ocean temperatures that affect the health and productivity of marine life and also aid in the formation and intensification of tropical cyclones which frequently impact many countries of Africa, especially towards the southeast such as Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar.
“A total area of 30, 00,000 square kilometres of the ocean was affected by MHWs between January and April 2024. In the latter six months of the year, the total affected area was 1.5 million square kilometres. The area affected by MHWs was the highest since records began in 1993, breaking the previous record set in 2023,” the State of Africa’s Environment 2025 pointed out.
Africa, the report said, is currently facing its deadliest climate crisis in over a decade, with the period between 2021 and 2025 emerging as the most devastating five-year stretch in terms of human toll from weather, climate and water-related disasters.
It pointed to an analysis by Down To Earth (DTE), a fortnightly published from Delhi, India, based on publicly available data from the Emergency Events Database international disaster database.
The analysis showed that at least 221.57 million people were affected during this five-year period, more than the combined totals from 2011-2015 and 2016-2020 periods. Disaster-related deaths rose to 28,759 — over three times the number recorded between 2016 and 2020.
“These figures, based on data available up to May 2025, are likely to rise further by year-end,” the State of Africa’s Environment 2025 said.
The continent experienced a series of extreme weather events, including droughts, floods, cyclones, landslides, cold waves and heatwaves. These recent events alone accounted for 54 per cent of the over 412 million people impacted by such disasters across Africa since 2011.