The African Climate Foundation will celebrate Africa Day on 25 May by launching its Strategic Framework which will capture the continent’s thinking around climate funding.
The ACF is the first African-led strategic climate change re-granting foundation on the continent. Building on the success of partner organisations, the ACF was established to provide a mechanism through which philanthropies can contribute to Africa’s climate change response strategies.
The ACF Strategic Framework has been created out of a year of extensive research and engagement. It has been informed and shaped by the knowledge and experience of a network of African scholars, practitioners, decision makers and activities who have been engaged throughout the process.
Saliem Fakir, ACF executive director said the Framework has been designed as a living and directional document meant to capture current thinking and approaches to climate change and development in Africa. “This will allow us to build a pipeline of initiative in Africa, which in the coming years, the ACF hopes to make strategic investments. African countries need to carve out new routes to development that are alive to both their unique conditions and new global realities.
He added: “At the core of the ACF’s strategy is that responding to climate change requires Africa to change the way it things about development.”
The Foundation understands that traditional framing tends to view climate change as tangential to development. Also, climate change is often see as imposing difficult trade-offs between reducing emissions and pursuing economic growth.
ACF highlights that shifting the paradigm and viewing climate change as intrinsic to the development agenda, enables everyone to being exploring opportunities for climate change interventions to transform sectors, reduce greenhouse emissions, uplift people and economies.
Working on the practicalities of how climate change fits into Africa’s energy transition
A just energy transition encapsulates this thinking and potential. The Foundation will also host an online dialogue on 25 May to provide practical and substantive content to what it means to work at the nexus of climate change and development.
“The development deficit on the continent provides Africa with an opportunity to explore alternative and viable models of development, which are arguably more difficult to pursue in countries locked into a particular trajectory. The decisions Africa makes in the next five years will determine the continent’s development path,” said Fakir.
During the launch and online dialogue, the ACF’s Pan-African Advisory will reflect on a core set of issues and responses to climate change, as well as share insights on the future trajectory of Africa’s energy transition. The Advisory Council consists of four African thought leaders in the field of energy, development economics, industrial policy, trade agriculture, gender and social inclusion, and technology and innovation.
The dialogue will address key conceptual framing questions with the aim to pivot the ACF’s Strategic Framework and provide insight on emerging opportunities that may inform the development of a Pan-African agenda for climate action in the lead to COP26 and COP27.
“We want to unlock opportunities at the nexus of climate change and development and encourage all to celebrate Africa Day with us to learn more about our much-anticipated Strategic Framework and Advisory Council dialogue,” said Fakir.
Check the African Climate Foundation website for more information about the dialogue.