Africa is not only on the frontlines of the climate crisis, but is also a source of powerful solutions. From leading agroecological transitions and renewable energy innovations to grassroots youth movements championing climate justice on the global stage, Africa is demonstrating resilience, creativity, and leadership in the face of mounting environmental challenges.
Africa contributes less than 10% of global greenhouse emissions but suffers disproportionately from the impacts of the climate crisisWorld Meteorological Organisation (WMO), 2023. Nine out of the 10 countries most affected by climate change are in AfricaNotre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative ranking, 2025. From the Horn of Africa to West and Central Africa, the Sahel and Southern Africa, the continent grapples with climate shocks including prolonged droughts, deadly flash floods and rising temperatures that are undermining food systems, displacing communities, and causing devastating loss and damage. With a growing population, the continent is projected to be home to 2.5 billion people by 2050UNECA, Demographic Profile of Africa, 2024. As global temperatures are expected to rise further, extreme weather and climate change impacts will continue to hit every single aspect of socio-economic development in Africa and exacerbating hunger, insecurity and displacementWorld Meteorological Organisation (WMO), 2024.
Africa’s critical mineral resources are at the centre of the rush for extraction and exploitation for the energy transition putting communities at risk of land grabs and human and environmental rights violations. At the same time, climate change interacts with both military conflicts and conflicts over resources, particularly between pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities, and is fuelling insecurity, migration and displacement, as well as ecosystem degradation and livelihood and food system disruptions. These impacts exacerbate long-standing structural injustices rooted in colonial patterns of extraction and unequal global trade. As a result, the region remains burdened by debt distress, land dispossession, and overreliance on extractive industries – factors that undermine adaptive capacity and entrench poverty and inequality. Climate change amplifies gender, economic, and social inequalities, hitting hardest those with the fewest resources to respond, including women farmers, pastoralists, informal workers, people with disabilities, refugees and displaced communities and Indigenous peoples. The survival of millions of Africans is under threat, and many more risk falling back into poverty due to effects of the climate crisis on agriculture, which is the backbone of many African economies, and which over 60% of Africans depend on for survivalFAO, Estimating global and country-level employment in agrifood systems, 2023. To make the things worse, the limited financing that is available to adapt to climate change, respond to the loss and damage sustained, and to support the energy transition is not reaching the communities who need it most. And much of this finance has been provided as loans, which means that it risks increasing the debt burden of the countries it is supposed to help.
Despite formidable challenges, Africa’s strengths lie in its diversity, resilience, innovation, and activism. Climate action is being driven by feminist movements, youth organizers, Indigenous networks, and agroecological networks. Efforts like the Africa Youth Climate Assembly are advocating for inclusive climate policies and a “by Africa for Africa” climate agenda, pushing for debt restructuring, a new Global Climate Finance Charter, and emphasizing the continent’s potential as a climate solution leader. The African Union’s Agenda 2063, African Union Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan (2022 – 2032), and initiatives like the Great Green Wall, Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program, Climate for Development in Africa provide regional platforms to scale climate justice, adaptation and governance efforts. The region also has significant untapped potential for scaling up renewable energy – including hydroelectric, wind, solar and geothermal, creating opportunities for a just energy transition.
1) Mobilizing Climate Finance for Fair Climate Action
Although climate finance flows to Africa have increased significantly in recent years, in 2022 the continent received only 23% of the estimated $277 billion needed annually to implement its Nationally Determined Contributions between 2020 and 2030Climate Policy Initiative, The Landscape of Climate Finance in Africa 2024. In addition, most of this financing comes in the form of loans rather than grants, which compounds countries’ debt burdens and significantly constrains their budgetary space for climate investments. The lack of transparency, participation, and direct access for local communities to climate finance further compounds this injustice.
Oxfam and CAN advocate for the polluter pays principle, and for grant-based, locally accessible finance and supports efforts to increase the transparency and accountability of financial flows. Oxfam has conducted regional and country-level climate finance research to generate evidence on how little climate finance is reaching Africa’s rural communities and supports civil society to engage with local and national governments and at the global level for climate finance to be more accessible for the people who need it most.
We work to strengthen communities’ and civil society capacities to identify their needs and engage with decision-makers to influence decisions, ensuring the voices of those most affected by the crisis, such as small-scale women food producers, are included in climate dialogues. We also support communities to identify and pilot innovative mechanisms to access climate finance directly for their own priorities. We also engage with the private sector to scale up effective approaches to improve rural livelihoods, such as micro-insurance for smallholder farmers.
2) Supporting Local Adaptation to Build Resilience
Across Africa, communities are leading adaptation efforts grounded in local knowledge. Oxfam and our partners have co-created participatory adaptation planning processes. We have supported the formation of local resilience funds and ensured community voices are included in national climate dialogues. We also work directly with rural communities – youth, women smallholder farmers and cooperatives – to identify and scale up their solutions to the changing climate, for example agroecology and climate smart agriculture, water desalination and solar powered irrigation and land restoration. The farmer field school approach provides inclusive spaces for small scale farmers to identify their own priorities, share knowledge, learn and develop solutions.
We are also piloting innovative mechanisms and decentralized financing models to ensure climate finance reaches rural communities, such as Payment for Ecosystem Services. We have extensive experience of working in conflict and fragile settings on enhancing adaptation capacities.
3) Advancing a Just Energy Transition
Africa’s energy transition must serve the dual imperatives of justice and access. Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, and nearly 900 million still rely on biomass and charcoal for cookingInternational Energy Agency (IEA), 2024. Yet much of the region’s energy planning continues to prioritize fossil fuel expansion or large-scale, with centralized projects that contribute further to the climate crisis, and often entrench inequalities and ignore local needs. The potential of renewable solutions such as solar to meet the energy needs of the most vulnerable remain underexploited.
Our vision for a just energy transition in Africa connects climate justice, economic justice, and natural resource justice. We work with communities to expand access to clean, affordable, and decentralized energy systems — especially off-grid renewable solutions — that are led by and accountable to local populations. We focus on empowering communities to document the impacts of energy projects and assert their rights, engaging governments and private actors to clarify roles and ensure public oversight, ensuring energy systems are designed to meet the specific needs of women (e.g., cooking, water pumping, lighting for safety) and pushing to scale up proven local energy solutions in ways that are equitable, transparent, and sustainable. Oxfam advocates for energy transition frameworks and policies that create an enabling environment for investments in cleaner and greener options of energy, and to open up civic space for front-line communities to demand the institution of principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent, Polluter Pays Principles and accountability for inclusive energy systems from both public and private sector players.
We also engage in Nationally Determined Contributions and other national planning and policy processes to hold governments accountable for inclusive and rights-based energy transition commitments. Across the region, Oxfam has worked with civil society platforms to track implementation, demand public participation, and influence the direction of Just Energy Transition Partnerships models.
There are current and emerging risks around critical and transitional minerals such as cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements — which are vital to clean energy technologies but often come with human rights violations, environmental degradation, and corporate impunity. At country level we support communities to understand their rights, monitor cases of rights violations and engage with powerholders to ensure their rights are respected. We also support communities’ advocacy at the African Union and national levels to ensure human rights due diligence, corporate accountability, and community consent in mineral extraction, and ensure that African communities benefit from the revenues.
4) Strengthening Movements and Activism
Civic space across Africa is increasingly under threat, with environmental defenders and youth activists facing intimidation and arrest. Yet across the continent social movements are growing in influence, in part thanks to the continent’s large youth population, and there is a movement building and mobilizing using art, storytelling, legal advocacy, and organizing to demand governmental accountability climate justice.
We have long-standing relationships with partners and allies working together in movements. We work with a wide network of communities, youth and women-led organizations to strengthen their capacities to raise awareness within their communities, build movements and advocate for their needs. We have supported movements to organize climate caravans, and convened spaces across the continent where groups working on diverse causes can join together.
Oxfam, CAN and our partners see opportunities to leverage the digital transformation and create platforms to train activists on movement organizing, facilitating shared learning across the region, and to build on our experience in rapid response mechanisms from humanitarian work to support activists at risk.