---
title: "Deserving Africa wants its climate funding"
description: "As it calls for climate finance, Africa can showcase homegrown fixes that are beginning to blunt the fallout from rising heat and failed rains."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "HOMEGROWN SOLUTIONS"
author: "Seth Onyango"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/seth-onyango/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-09-28-deserving-africa-wants-its-climate-funding/"
published: "2026-09-28T13:12:04"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 925
---

# Deserving Africa wants its climate funding

> As it calls for climate finance, Africa can showcase homegrown fixes that are beginning to blunt the fallout from rising heat and failed rains.

By Seth Onyango · Published 28 September 2026, 15:12 SAST

## Key points
- Africa is taking homegrown climate solutions to the UN — and demanding finance to scale them up.
- From restoring farmland in Tanzania to reviving mangroves in Kenya and Zanzibar, adaptation projects are already delivering results.
- A new $200-million facility aims to make climate lending to smallholder farmers a lasting business, not a donor-funded exception.
- With debt, high borrowing costs and worsening climate shocks slowing progress towards the SDGs, African leaders are pressing for direct, faster access to adaptation funds.

## Content

African climate projects are restoring worn-out farmland, bringing back coastal mangrove forests and moving loans to smallholder farmers at a scale that is starting to show up in national figures. Backers are now pushing for better financing that outlasts donor grants at the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, which ends on Monday, 28 September.

African countries are also pushing for changes to the global financial system to deal with debt, high borrowing costs and the flow of finance to developing economies.

The *2026 Africa Sustainable Development Report*, published in July and produced by the African Union Commission, UN Economic Commission for Africa, African Development Bank and UNDP, finds that Africa has made measurable gains on water, energy, industrialisation, sustainable cities and partnerships.

“Africa continues to make measurable gains across many development indicators, and progress is recorded in 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), mirroring the findings of previous assessments,” the report says in part.

Still, it warns that the pace and scale remain inadequate, held back by financing constraints, infrastructure gaps, climate shocks, conflict, rising debt service costs and institutional capacity limitations.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that the current El Niño is likely to persist into early 2027, raising the risk of drought, floods and displacement across parts of Africa. In the Greater Horn of Africa, the WMO and regional forecasters expect warmer and wetter than normal conditions in the final quarter of 2026.

### Strong focus on impacts

Climate change featured heavily at this year’s UN General Assembly, with 24 September dedicated to a high-level meeting on sea level rise. Governments and climate finance institutions are under pressure to show that adaptation money can produce practical results, particularly as El Niño threatens to intensify climate shocks across the continent.

But in East Africa, progress is already strong where work on land, water and coasts aligns with gains noted in the *2026 Africa Sustainable Development Report*.

In Tanzania’s Mwanza region, inside the Lake Victoria watershed, a $2.9-million grant from a US foundation is being used to expand a system that replaces plots of maize and sunflower alone with mixtures of trees, fruit, vegetables, grain and fodder.

Trees for the Future will support 2,780 smallholder farmers a year between 2026 and 2029. The aim is to rebuild soil, raise yields and help households to absorb rainfall that has become harder to predict.

On Kenya’s southern coast, in Gazi Bay, the Aga Khan Foundation and Portugal’s Camões Institute are working to restore 226ha of mangrove forest. About 65,000 seedlings have been planted on 6ha.

In Zanzibar, a restoration project is rehabilitating 3,300ha of mangrove and coral rag forests in 16 areas managed by communities.

A $200-million facility launched this month aims to channel climate adaptation finance to farmers through commercial lending, with the Equity Group taking a direct lending role alongside public and concessional capital.

The Africa Rural Climate Adaptation Finance Mechanism was set up by the group and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) at the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali. It will run for 12 years in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.

Of the $180-million it will lend, $90-million comes from the Equity Group’s own balance sheet, matching the concessional contribution. International partners cover the first losses and a middle layer of risk is shared with the group, which carries the senior risk.

Gérardine Mukeshimana, vice-president of Ifad, said the aim was to make rural climate adaptation a viable and lasting business line for African financial institutions.

Diana Nabiruma, manager of programmes and communications at the Africa Institute for Energy Governance in Uganda, said civil society organisations across the continent were already supporting ­forest-based enterprises and clean energy entrepreneurship.

“With access to clean energy remaining dismal, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, clean energy entrepreneurship that includes training and supporting communities to fabricate and sell clean energy solutions provides communities with an opportunity to participate in taking climate action while making a living,” she said.

### Action priorities

The report sets out five priorities for faster action. They include stronger domestic tax collection, more climate and development finance, faster digital roll-out, protection of development gains from conflict and climate shocks, and a bigger role for resilience in national planning.

It says upcoming global climate negotiations offer Africa a chance to press for climate finance, adaptation, green industrialisation and sustainable growth.

African governments were expected to use the UN General Debate to press for direct access to adaptation funds for institutions on the continent, rather than routing money through intermediaries that slow disbursement and add conditions.

This argument has gained ground as evidence accumulates that money reaching the front line produces results. The Mwanza project has restored land and raised food supplies. The Kenyan and Zanzibar work has put coastal communities in charge of the assets they depend on. The Kigali facility has drawn a private bank into lending it would not otherwise have made.

What remains unsettled is whether these efforts stay exceptions or become the norm. Only four years remain before the 2030 deadline around which the SDG goals were built. The report says progress must accelerate sharply, and that upcoming climate summits offer Africa its best opening to demand the money to do it. – *Bird Story Agency*/**DM**

*This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click on the cover of the newspaper below to access the e-edition.*

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