6 ways to tackle the climate crisis in Africa

Watch all sessions from GLF Africa 2024 on demand.

It’s no secret that the climate crisis is taking a disproportionate toll on Africa.

But what if Africa could teach the world how to overcome it?

Yesterday, 3,400 people gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from 119 countries to start greening the African horizon – and set an example for the rest of humanity to follow.

From GLF Africa 2024, here are six ways Africa can handle the climate and biodiversity crises and revitalize its landscapes for future generations.

Heal the Earth

Africa’s landscapes are not in a healthy state.

Up to 65 percent of the continent’s productive land is degraded, while 45 percent is facing desertification, according to a 2021 UN report.

But people across Africa are working relentlessly to keep their land alive, whether it’s through grassroots projects like those led by GLFx chapters and Restoration Stewards or large-scale initiatives like AFR100, Regreening Africa and the Great Green Wall.

“By restoring land and productive systems, humanity can secure the nature-positive net zero pathways needed to safeguard a healthy planet,” said Elizabeth Mrema, deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

African countries have taken key steps towards achieving global climate, biodiversity and land goals, including submitting their national determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement and committing to targets under the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

And the continent has shown promise in areas like landscape restoration and the expansion of protected areas, said Youba Sokona, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Achieving these ambitious goals will require political will, sustained international support, a robust policy framework and active local community engagement,” Sokona added.

Team up to chalk up

It’s well known that Africa contributes just a tiny fraction of the world’s carbon emissions. It can’t – and shouldn’t – solve the climate crisis alone.

“There’s a proverb from Tanzania: two ants don’t fail to lift a grasshopper,” said Betty Kibaara, a director in the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, Africa Region Office.

“And for us to be able to build strong partnerships, we need to align on a vision.”

For such partnerships to be meaningful, they must actively involve local communities while recognizing and enforcing their land and resource rights, said Solange Bandiaky-Badji, coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

“We need to think about the land managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities and how they can help governments achieve their targets,” said Bandiaky-Badji.

Restoration comes with a hefty price tag, though – which is why projects in Africa are often primarily funded by development banks, public funds and private investors based in the Global North.

But as speakers pointed out, Africa also has its own financing sources that have yet to be tapped.

“We also have pockets of local capital that continue to grow – I’m talking about pension funds in Africa,” said Mary Njuguna, a principal specialist in capital markets at FSD Africa.

“There are other collective investment schemes like mutual funds, which continue to grow on the continent, but they are not invested as efficiently as they should be.”

Philanthropy offers another growing source of capital. “We’re starting to see a next generation of African philanthropists emerge, and that’s really exciting,” said Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, CEO of the ONE Campaign.

“It’s really important to note that large international philanthropists are starting to prioritize Africa, and some have actually moved their headquarters to Africa.”

Switch up the menu

Africa is in the midst of a baby boom. How will it feed a population that’s set to triple by 2100?

For some experts, the answer is to use more fertilizers to boost crop yields.

“In sub-Saharan Africa, we use very low amounts of fertilizers, and this has led to low soil fertility,” said Pauline Chivenge, a principal scientist at the African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI), at a debate on the merits of conventional agriculture versus agroecology.

Chivenge pointed out that African soils suffer from what’s known as ‘nutrient mining’ – when the soil loses more nutrients than it gains after crops have been grown.

“We need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to be added periodically or continuously, and then we need to use fertilizers in an appropriate way so that it doesn’t harm the environment,” she said.

But African soils respond poorly to chemical fertilizers, which were specifically developed for temperate soils, rebutted Alex Awiti, a principal scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF.

“So, the proposition that we need more fertilizer becomes very problematic when soils are already not responding,” he said. “We need to get soil processes resuscitated and working again to then even enhance the efficiency of fertilizer.”

This can be done by complementing fertilizer use with agroforestry systems to maintain crop cover, Awiti suggested.

“Over time, as we repair the soil and regenerate and create the capacity of soil to regenerate itself, we will need less fertilizer in the soil,” said Awiti.

GLF Africa also saw the launch of a new framework to help countries green their agrifood systems, developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) under the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Program.

Currently being piloted in five countries, the Participatory Informed Landscape Approach (PILA) uses an integrated landscape management approach to transform food value chains.

End all systems of oppression

Restoring landscapes is all well and good, but what if it comes at the cost of those already on the margins of society?

A common thread throughout the conference was the importance of protecting rights and livelihoods, including those of women, youth and traditional communities.

“We hear that Africa has immense potential to lead the world, yet we still invite the same false solutions in,” said writers and activists Felicity Asibi Akwa and Taiye Owo in unison during a spoken-word performance.

“We still listen to the same people who have overexploited our lands, birthed colonialism, betrayed humanity and driven the agenda of violence against our women, youth and culture.”

Instead, there’s plenty that Africa can learn by returning to its roots, including revisiting traditional land management practices that have been carried out for centuries.

“For us, stewardship isn’t about managing the land – it means nurturing the land so it thrives for future generations,” said Semerian Sankori, an Indigenous Maasai woman and founder and executive director of Patinaai Osim.

“It means preserving natural resources and protecting them from degradation. It means sustaining a harmonious balance between people, livestock and wildlife.”

With some 70 percent of Africa’s population now under the age of 35, it’s crucial that young people continue to inherit and pass on this ancestral wisdom.

“Youth make up a very important and critical mass of the population,” said Simangele Msweli, senior manager for the Youth Leadership Program at the African Wildlife Foundation.

“The biodiversity and climate crisis requires a whole-of-society approach – everyone must take action.”

Innovate

The AI revolution is here. It’s already transforming conservation – and it’ll play a vital role in restoring Africa’s landscapes, too.

Many African farmers struggle to obtain loans as they lack credit records, said Charlette N’Guessan, a data solutions and ecosystem lead at Amini, an AI-driven data platform targeted at the Global South.

“But with AI, we can use other types of data: on your soils, the crops you are planting and the timeline. So, we can anticipate and get an understanding of what your credit score is,” N’Guessan explained.

Unfortunately, agricultural data remains hard to come by in Africa.

“We need to design systems that are appropriate for the context of Africa,” said Catherine Nakalembe, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland and Africa Program director at NASA Harvest.

Many of today’s AI models have been trained using data from the Global North and will need to be retrained based on African data, Nakalembe said. For example, while monocultures are predominant in the U.S., Kenyan agriculture sees much wider use of intercropping.

“While AI experts can develop the models, we need agriculture specialists who are familiar with soils and agroecology as we develop them,” Nakalembe added.

The GLF announced the creation of an AI hub to promote community-driven AI solutions, while CIFOR-ICRAF launched a new initiative that aims to increase the supply of diverse, high-quality seedlings of native tree species.

Leave no one behind

Africa’s past, present and future all revolve around a common denominator: land. So, what would a just transition for Africa look like?

To close the event, CIFOR-ICRAF CEO Éliane Ubalijoro called for a new development model centered on land restoration and stewardship – one that recognizes and remunerates farmers and communities for their vital role.

“Africa is poised as a leader in this regard,” she said. “The continent’s bright minds show the rest of the world what we can achieve with inclusive, rights-based governance policy reforms and knowledge co-production systems for smallholders and local communities across landscapes.”

For a continent that’s all too often portrayed as dependent and subservient, speakers were adamant that its time has come to flip the script.

“There is a need to decolonize how we do climate justice and land restoration,” said Deborah Oyugi, an officer in safeguarding and ethics at the International Justice Mission.

“Whatever has happened on other continents – whatever the donors and the granters are saying – might not be the solution for Africa. There is a need for Africa to come up with African solutions. There is a need for women to be involved in coming up with solutions to land issues.”

“Africa is a land of opportunities; Africa is a land of culture with enormous potential for wealth and abundance,” Asibi and Owo chanted in their spoken-word performance.

“We can only say that we have succeeded when the least of us is listened to, taken care of and not left behind.”