ACS 2 – 2025
THEME
ACCELERATING GLOBAL CLIMATE SOLUTIONS: FINANCING FOR AFRICA’S RESILIENT AND GREEN DEVELOPMENT
1. Introduction
Ethiopia, the Land of Origins, and home to Africans, will host the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) convened by the African Union Commission (AUC) in Addis Ababa from 8–10 September 2025. The Summit will be preceded by pre-summit events from 5–7 September 2025.
The Summit will be structured around the following:
Nature and technology-based solutions to drive adaptation, development and resilience on day one.
Adaptation and resilience, spotlighting Africa’s climate risks and scalable responses, on day two.
Climate finance and African-led solutions, shifting from aid to investment in local innovation, on day three.
A Diverse Gathering
The ACS will bring together leaders from Africa and beyond: Heads of State and Government, development partners, intergovernmental organizations, private sector, academia, Indigenous Peoples, civil society organizations, women, and youth.
This diverse gathering aims to design and catalyze African-led solutions for climate change and deliberate on how to leverage both domestic and international climate financing, rooted in African priorities and local innovation, to accelerate implementation of existing commitments.
Africa’s Disproportionate Burden
Africa, a continent responsible for less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, bears a disproportionate burden from climate change impacts. The result: unpredictable weather patterns, prolonged droughts, devastating floods, and desert locust invasions.
The 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) notes that Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a 34% decline in agricultural productivity since the 1960s due to climate shifts, affecting the 60% of Africans reliant on rain-fed farming.
Furthermore, the Congo Basin Rainforest — the world’s second-largest carbon sink — is degrading at alarming rates, with deforestation claiming 500,000 hectares yearly, exacerbating biodiversity loss and carbon emissions.
Climate Finance Gaps
By 2030, African countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) will require nearly US$3 trillion for full implementation.
However, the climate finance received in 2021–2022 ($30 billion) shows the massive gap between provided global climate finance and the priorities and needs of the continent.
With African governments committed to mobilizing about 10 percent domestically, an immense gap of approximately 80 percent, or $2.5 trillion, remains to achieve climate mitigation and adaptation targets.
This significant gap underscores the critical need for international support, alongside domestic resource mobilization, for African countries to meet their climate actions.
Technological Investments
African nations are, however, investing in scalable technological solutions to help fast-track results. These include:
Digital climate-smart agriculture platforms
Remote sensing for forest monitoring
Solar-powered irrigation systems
Regional power pools to enhance electric connectivity and cross-border renewable energy trade
Examples of African Climate Action
Despite these immense challenges, African nations have spearheaded significant climate action. To name a few:
Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative, planting 40 billion seedlings between 2019 and 2023
Kenya’s commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2030
Democratic Republic of Congo's efforts to conserve the Congo Basin
The Great Green Wall initiative, restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land and sequestering 250 million tons of CO₂ across the Sahel
These efforts often exceed Africa’s "fair share" under the climate change regime. Yet the continent, while calling for equity and climate justice, has focused on home-grown solutions.
Moving Beyond Aid
Recognizing the evolving global geopolitical and funding landscape, where traditional grant-based and aid models are diminishing, the Africa Climate Summit offers a critical opportunity to move beyond established narratives.
In this context, regional cooperation and harmonized policy implementation are more important than ever.
African countries must coordinate strategic partnerships and regional initiatives that align national actions with Africa’s collective climate and development goals, ensuring that climate resilience is pursued with shared accountability and mutual benefit.
African leaders should proactively shape and champion innovative finance models, advocating for fairer debt terms, leveraging private sector investment, and developing continent-specific blended finance solutions.
The Summit will strategically identify leverage points within global climate negotiations to champion these novel frameworks, ensuring Africa's climate agenda is underpinned by sustainable, equitable, and transformative financing pathways.
Building on ACS1
Building on key lessons from ACS1, the Summit will strategically anchor its agenda on solutions that Africa offers, spanning policy and implementation across diverse thematic components and their intersections.
This approach shifts the focus to the continent's inherent potential and the opportunities it can leverage to achieve and surpass its climate ambitions.
2. Vision for ACS-2
The second edition of the Africa Climate Summit aims to serve as a platform to inform, frame, and influence commitments, pledges, and outcomes.
The Summit will bring Africa’s shared vision of climate action on advancing Africa-led solutions and how to finance them, collaboratively championed by the African Union Commission (AUC) and Ethiopia as the host.
Financing for Green Development
The Summit emphasizes the need for Africa to harness climate financing strategies that address the impacts of climate change while contributing to both climate adaptation and mitigation interventions, ensuring green development.
It recognizes Africa’s potential for global climate solutions, emphasizing the need for fair and equitable allocation of resources and support, particularly for African nations that have historically contributed the least to climate change but are disproportionately affected by its impacts.
Yet the continent has immense potential for climate change rectifications for the region specifically, and the globe in general.
Africa’s Moment to Lead
The ACS-2 is Africa’s moment to lead global climate action.
Ahead of COP30 and building on ACS-1, ACS-2 will unify Africa’s voice to shape global climate negotiations.
It will push for:
Fairer global finance systems
Prioritization of renewable energy
Nature-based and technology-based solutions
Adaptation and community-led solutions
This vision empowers African communities, especially youth and indigenous groups, to shape a prosperous, climate-resilient future.
The Summit will seek to elevate the climate change crisis as a justice and fairness issue, resonating with the African Union theme of the year (2025):
“Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations.”
Guiding Principles of ACS-2
The ACS-2 is firmly guided by key principles, including a strong commitment to multilateralism and the imperative to restore trust in global governance processes established to tackle climate change impacts.
The Summit is built on principles that reflect a shift in how climate action is approached:
Upholding international rights frameworks – providing the legal and moral foundation for just and equitable climate action.
Recognizing interdependence of nations – promoting a respectful model of sustainable development that reduces emissions in developed countries, scales up adaptation efforts, and ensures access to green technologies for the most vulnerable.
Prioritizing transparency and accountability – ensuring that climate policy decisions are informed by science and responsive to the needs of low-income countries.
Championing nature- and people-centred partnerships – offering innovative and sustainable solutions to climate challenges.
A Call to Policymakers
The Summit will call upon all policymakers and stakeholders to present course-correcting solutions for mobilizing political and financial actions to combat the climate crisis.
Positioned ahead of COP30, the Summit will:
Consolidate Africa’s voice and elevate it as a unified force in international negotiations.
Catalyze long-overdue reforms in the global financial system.
Advocate for new mechanisms that reflect Africa’s realities and priorities, particularly in renewable energy access, climate adaptation, and resilience.
Deepen South–South cooperation and foster a new era of global partnerships rooted in equity, innovation, and African-led solutions.
The long-term impact will be a strengthened continental position that not only influences COP30 but also institutionalizes Africa’s leadership in global climate governance.
A High-Level Event
As a high-level event bringing together leaders and investors from Africa and beyond, the Summit aims to leverage potential opportunities that yield concrete, actionable, and impactful climate action interventions.
African Union Member States and supporting partners are called to:
Champion the delivery of a sustainable climate financing mechanism.
Elevate climate-resilient and green development initiatives.
Pursue equality and shared prosperity.
This recognizes that Africa's climate resilience is integral to global stability and sustainable development.
3. Unlocking Scalable Climate Finance and Showcasing African Solutions
ACS2 will be built around two strategic pillars that drive the core purpose of the Summit:
Showcasing African solutions for climate action
Unlocking scalable climate finance
(a) Showcasing African Solutions for Climate Action
The Summit will highlight homegrown innovations, policies, and practices that are driving real progress across the continent.
From nature-based approaches to cutting-edge technologies, and from community resilience to green enterprise, the aim is to bring visibility to what African countries and actors are already delivering.
This pillar includes, amongst others, the following potential solutions:
Nature-Based Solutions
The Summit will underscore how nature-based solutions — including carbon markets — offer distinct pathways for climate finance in Africa, each with unique advantages that the continent can explore.
Examples include:
Reforestation
Afforestation
Land restoration
These leverage the power of ecosystems to build resilience, mitigate climate change, and provide co-benefits.
Technology-Based Solutions
The Summit will shed light on technology development and innovations, including:
Renewable energy
Energy efficiency
Carbon capture
Improved agricultural practices
These can directly reduce emissions and enhance adaptation capabilities.
Emphasis will also be placed on building the knowledge base and technical skills required to deploy and scale these solutions effectively across the continent.
Locally Led Adaptation Initiatives
The Summit will explore approaches to:
Strengthen direct access modalities to build local ownership
Support national and subnational institutions with capacity and empowerment
Ensure access to means of implementation without passing through international intermediaries
This includes investment in locally led adaptation, prioritizing vulnerable communities like women and Indigenous groups.
Climate-Induced Mobility, Peace, and Security Nexus
Africa recognizes that the climate mobility–peace–security nexus presents a potential opportunity for mobilizing adequate and sustainable financing.
This is crucial for addressing climate challenges and enhancing Africa’s climate-resilient development because climate change exacerbates existing conflicts and creates new vulnerabilities, impacting peace, security, and climate-related migration.
Climate Change and Health Nexus
The climate change and health nexus presents a significant opportunity for leveraging climate finance to address both global warming and its associated health impacts.
By integrating climate adaptation and mitigation efforts with health systems, investments can be maximized and co-benefits realized.
Equity & Just Transition
The just transition narrative needs to consider Africa’s realities and historical inequalities.
This includes the urgent need to expand access to reliable, affordable electricity for the hundreds of millions still living without power.
It is important to ensure global dialogues on just transition bring Africa’s story to the forefront, ensuring communities are not left behind as economies shift toward low-carbon growth, with emphasis on development and social justice.
Africa’s just transition must be rooted in development justice and equitable energy transition:
Phasing out fossil fuel in a way that expands decent work
Protecting vulnerable livelihoods
Closing the energy access gap
Ensuring sustainable development
The Summit will prioritize:
Social dialogue with trade unions, youth, and informal sectors
Advocacy for climate investments that create local value chains
Expanding access to electricity
Fostering equitable transitions for fossil fuel-dependent regions
Supporting skills-building for a climate-compatible economy
(b) Unlocking Scalable Climate Finance for Climate Action
The Summit will push forward concrete ways to mobilize and align large-scale funding with Africa’s climate priorities.
This means tackling barriers in access to finance, building stronger investment pipelines, and promoting new financial instruments that work for African contexts.
The goal is to enable African countries to:
Scale up what works
Deliver more ambitious climate action
Drive sustainable economic transformation
Reforming Grant-Based Climate Finance
The Summit will explore whether current grant-based climate finance is fit for purpose.
It will provide space to interrogate where course corrections are needed to better align grant flows with Africa’s priorities.
Focus areas include:
Making grants more accessible, targeted, and effective in driving impact on the ground
Identifying gaps in the current architecture
Proposing ways to ensure grants deliver real value to African countries and communities
Building Climate Resilience
The Summit will emphasize the need for achieving climate resilience in Africa.
This requires:
Proactive risk anticipation
Community empowerment
Strategic investments in early warning systems and climate services
Building long-term adaptive capacity and safeguarding sustainable development against climate shocks
Africa’s path to resilience demands a transformative agenda:
Strengthening institutional systems
Empowering communities
Integrating scientific knowledge into decision-making
This includes fortifying climate-sensitive sectors such as:
Agriculture (climate-resilient seed and livestock systems)
Urban and rural health systems
Resilient infrastructure (buildings, roads, water systems)
Local governance institutions that underpin both rural livelihoods and urban stability
Early Warning Systems (EWS) offer a critical opportunity for climate financing by improving preparedness and reducing the impact of climate-related hazards, saving lives and reducing economic losses.
Climate services will also provide science-based information that informs decision-making, justifying the need for climate financing.
Strategic Enablers for Climate Resilience
Achieving resilience in Africa requires enablers that support effective planning and adaptation:
Climate finance planning and budgeting – to align national priorities with scalable, bankable investments.
Impact-based forecasting – going beyond predicting weather events to assessing societal, economic, and ecological impacts.
Capacity building – ensuring institutions, communities, and sectors have the knowledge, tools, and technical capabilities for climate-resilient strategies.
Enabling Policy Reforms and Institutional Capacity
The Summit will explore reforms that:
Attract private investment
Boost SME access to climate finance
Support green mineral value chains
This includes enhancing the capacity and competitiveness of local miners and processing industries, positioning Africa as a key player in the geopolitics of the energy transition.
The Summit will also address risks of externally driven reforms that pressure least developed countries into policy changes misaligned with long-term goals.
The focus is on country-led reforms that balance investment needs with public interest and safeguard national priorities.
Building trusted and transparent institutions will ensure effective use of funds.
Mobilizing the Private Sector
Africa recognizes the significance of the private sector in achieving climate targets and securing the levels of finance required.
The Summit will explore government actions to incentivize private sector participation, including:
Developing a sustainable taxonomy for green and blue activities
Strengthening NDC pipelines of bankable projects
Supporting SMEs, which often face finance barriers but have massive growth potential
Collaboration and Partnerships
Besides enhancing South-South collaboration, the Summit will explore:
North-South partnerships
The significance of NDC Coordination Committees for improving institutional capacity and coordination
Collaboration with international organizations (UN agencies, bilateral institutions, MDBs) to close technical or skills gaps
Public diplomacy platforms to reposition Africa’s climate agenda as an opportunity for investment and innovation, rather than vulnerability and risk
4. Expected High-Level Outputs and Outcomes
This Summit is a pivotal moment for Africa to reshape its role in the global climate finance landscape — not only for the continent but for the globe as well.
The Summit provides an opportunity for an African Leaders Addis Ababa Declaration on Accelerating Global Climate Solutions and Financing for Africa’s Resilient and Green Development, accompanied by a Call to Action, urging African Union Member States and development partners to lead its implementation.
High-Level Outcomes
The Summit will seek to achieve the following outcomes:
Position Africa as a unified force to influence COP30, G20, and UNGA outcomes.
Drive concrete reforms to scale grant-based climate finance.
Showcase African-led climate solutions with potential for global impact.
Strengthen national and local systems and country platforms to manage and deliver climate finance.
Build strategic partnerships to support just transition and climate justice across the continent.
Expected Outputs
These outcomes will be reflected through the following outputs:
I. Adoption of the African Leaders Addis Ababa Declaration on Accelerating Climate Action and Finance for Africa’s Green Future and Call to Action.
II. Launch of a flagship report on initiatives and strategic partnerships at national, regional, continental, and global levels.
III. Mobilization of green investment commitments, including showcasing multi-billion-dollar projects across various sectors.
IV. Announcements of progress on major ongoing continental and international climate initiatives.
V. A clear roadmap for the implementation of the Summit’s declaration, announcements, and investment commitments.
5. Call to Action
The Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) is a high-level convening of leaders, implementing entities, partner organizations, and investors from Africa and the globe.
Its central aim is to accelerate climate action by identifying scalable solutions and unlocking transformative, scalable, and impactful climate finance solutions, particularly for the continent’s most vulnerable populations.
The Summit Calls Upon African Union Member States and Their Partners To:
Contribute to and champion the outcomes of the ACS-2 to ensure they’re tailored to Africa’s unique needs and priorities.
Seize the opportunity to elevate climate-resilient and green development initiatives as a vehicle for equity, prosperity, and long-term