President of the African Development Bank AfDB Group says the bank will provide $12.5 billion to support the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Programme AAAP.
He made the disclosure via his verified twitter handle akin_adesina on Wednesday. The AAAP is Africa’s programme supported by African Heads of State to mobilise more resources for climate change to advance the objectives of the African Adaptation Initiative. The AfDB and the Global Center on Adaptation GCA are mobilising $25 billion for this programme to which the bank committed 12.$5 billion. The Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program AAAP is the largest effort globally for adaptation.
“But we need money. The African Development Bank Group put down $12.5 billion out of $25 billion, so we are not begging. We are saying we didn’t t create the problem. We have come to the conversation with commitment, meet us halfway”, the AfDB president said.
Speaking during the recently concluded Africa Climate Adaptation Summit held in Rotterdam Netherlands, Adesina said Africa does not contribute more than three per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but suffered disproportionately from its negative consequences. Africa does not have the resources to tackle climate change. The continent receives only three per cent of global climate financing. If this trend continues Africa’s climate financing gap will reach $100 billion to $127 billion per year through 2030.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, the current climate financing architecture does not meet the needs of Africa. New estimates by the African Economic Outlook of the African Development Bank shows that Africa will need between $1.3 and $1.6 trillion between 2020 to 2030 or $118 billion to $145 billion annually to implement its commitments to the Paris Agreement and its nationally determined contributions.
According to the statement, the programme is an initiative of the AfDB and the GCA which aims to mobilise $25 billion over five years to accelerate and scale climate adaptation action across the continent. The AAAP was endorsed at the Leaders Dialogue on the Africa COVID19 Climate Emergency in April 2021 which was the largest gathering ever of African Heads of State and Government solely focused on adaptation.
In Glasgow the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Summit held as part of the COP26 World Leaders Summit saw several global leaders make commitments to support adaptation in Africa including through the AAAP.
The UK Government announced a strong commitment of 20 million pounds to support the upstream work of the AAAP. Also the AAAP would be implemented through two mechanisms First an AAA P Upstream Financing Facility housed at the GCA to support the evidence based knowledge project design and preparation and policy work needed for the success of AAA P operations.
The upstream facility provided resources to strengthen adaptation and resilience components into multilateral development bank projects in the pipeline. The facility which also needed capitalisation of $250 million would help to mainstream solutions on climate adaptation.
Second an AAAP Downstream Investment Facility to be housed at the AfDB would be developed under the direct leadership of the president of the bank. The facility was expected to use the resources to unlock financing from African national governments impact investors foundations and other innovative sources such as resilience bonds and debt for climate adaptation swaps in a coordinated programme. The downstream facility to be capitalised at $1.75 billion would help leverage additional adaptation finance by a factor of four times to deliver seven billion dollars of additional adaptation finance. The AAAP upstream facility at the GCA has helped to generate $3 billion of mainstream climate adaptation investments by AfDB from agriculture to energy, transport, water and sanitation.