Adesina: Africa has no excuse to remain poor
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00:00 Earlier in Dubai, my colleague Fifi Peters caught up with the president of the African
00:05 Development Bank, Akinnumi Adesina, to speak about Africa's priorities.
00:09 Well, I think, you know, the fact is that we all realize that talk is cheap.
00:16 And at the end of the day, the people that we care about, the farmers that are constantly
00:19 going through droughts and floods, the countries that are seeing a lot of cyclones that are
00:24 wiping out their communities and even reducing the GDP of countries, when I look at it from
00:29 the perspective of Africa, a continent that is losing $7 to $15 billion a year due to
00:35 climate change, and if nothing gets done seriously at scale, that could easily reach $50 billion
00:40 by 2040.
00:42 And so we didn't need support for climate adaptation yesterday.
00:47 You know, we needed it way, way, way, way, way before.
00:51 And therefore, for me, what's really very important is the fact that the resources have
00:55 to get to the countries.
00:57 The actions have to be at scale.
00:58 And we have to move with deliberate speed.
01:02 We just had a session that, you know, was very well attended, standing room only, on
01:07 the African Adaptation Acceleration Program, which is our program to support Africa to
01:12 adapt to climate change.
01:13 You know, Africa contributes no more than 3 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions,
01:19 but it suffers all these challenges disproportionately.
01:22 And therefore, we need to make sure Africa has the resources to adapt to climate change.
01:27 And that's why we launched what's called the African Adaptation Acceleration Program, or
01:32 we just call it AAAP, yeah, and together with the Global Center on Adaptation, to mobilize
01:37 $25 billion to support African countries to do climate adaptation.
01:42 That is the largest climate adaptation program in the world.
01:47 And as a bank, you know, because I really believe in very practical things, you know,
01:51 we are putting our money where our mouth is.
01:54 You know, today, as an African Development Bank, 64 percent of all of our financing for
01:58 climate goes to adaptation, because that's the main challenge that Africa really has.
02:03 And in addition, we also brought to this particular summit a number of things that are also very
02:07 important for the least developed countries, because it is the least developed countries
02:11 that are not able to mobilize the resources to actually not only do their regular development,
02:16 but now have to adapt to climate change.
02:18 And so we have the African Development Fund, which is the concession of financing window
02:23 of the African Development Bank.
02:25 We have launched what's called the Climate Action Window, which has now $429 million.
02:32 And this $429 million, we want to grow it to $14 billion.
02:36 That will do the following practically, you know, sometimes you have all these big monies,
02:40 but practically what are we talking about?
02:42 Now, this will allow us to provide for farmers that are facing the real challenges of climate,
02:48 you know, being divested by 20 million African farmers through this African Climate Action
02:54 Window.
02:55 We'll be able to get access to climate insurance in terms of weather insurance products for
03:00 themselves.
03:01 Also, 20 million farmers will be able to have access to agricultural technologies, heat-tolerant
03:07 varieties and things like that, that allows them to adapt to climate change.
03:11 Third, we'll be able to provide support to rehabilitate 1 million hectares of degraded
03:17 lands because that's areas where you have degradation and climate degradation, environmental
03:23 degradation.
03:24 You have to revitalize the land.
03:28 So 1 million hectares of that, we're looking at providing water and sanitation and also
03:33 health services in areas that are climate affected to 10 million people, but also 18
03:38 million people, and also in terms of renewable energy, being able to provide that for 10
03:43 million people.
03:44 So that Climate Action Window is launched at the African, at the summit right here for
03:49 the COP.
03:50 The third thing that we are doing at scale is what happens in terms of how do you insure
03:55 the countries?
03:56 You know, when droughts happen or floods happen and the countries get hit, how do they make
04:01 sure that ex-ante, they have a way of financing themselves that should this happen, just like
04:06 you insure yourself for accidents and things like that.
04:09 So we've been running this program now for the last, I think, three years, working very,
04:14 very well so that we insure countries, they can get payouts, they pay to them when disasters
04:21 happen and so we decided to go to scale.
04:24 So right here at the Africa, at the COP28, we are launching what we call the African
04:30 Climate Risk Insurance Facility for Adaptation.
04:33 It's a $1 billion facility that we will use to pay premiums for countries to insure themselves
04:39 against extreme weather patterns and also help to reinsure themselves on global insurance
04:45 markets.
04:46 These are some of the things that we are doing, but apart from just adaptation, we also have
04:53 to deal with the issue of access to basic things like energy and clean cooking.
04:58 You know, for example, the African Development Bank, we're implementing a $20 billion program
05:03 that is called Desert to Power, which will help to develop 10,000 megawatts of solar
05:09 all across 11 countries in Africa.
05:11 And you know what that's going to do?
05:12 That will provide electricity for 250 million people and that will be, when completed, the
05:19 largest solar zone in the world.
05:21 So we are focused very much on adaptation, but we are also doing quite a lot in terms
05:25 of energy to make sure we have universal access to electricity in Africa.
05:29 And I'm glad that you mentioned the word "we" because the overarching message that we have
05:33 heard so far from this COP is about the importance of collective action in meeting the 2030 and
05:39 even the 2050 goals of net zero, which we've also heard that we're not on track for.
05:45 So maybe you can also invite us into your confidence, sir, about some of the things
05:49 that the AFDB is doing collectively or hoping to do collectively with some investors and
05:55 the multinational institutions and other development finance institutions that are here, sir.
05:59 Yeah.
06:00 You know, for example, take the case of the issue of green infrastructure.
06:04 So we have to help Africa to unlock its renewable energy potential.
06:09 We have to make sure that the transport systems can use natural gas to compress natural gas
06:14 to be able to reduce the emissions from just using fossil fuel quite a lot.
06:19 But also at the same time, being able to support African countries to have clean cooking solutions,
06:25 because today you have roughly 300,000 women that die every year from just trying to do
06:32 a basic thing that everybody takes for granted, cook a decent meal for their families.
06:37 And so we have to make sure they have liquefied petroleum gas to be able to do clean cooking.
06:45 Plus, also you have to have more climate resilient water infrastructure.
06:51 So as a result of that, we decided to form an alliance, and it is called Alliance for
06:57 Green Infrastructure in Africa.
07:00 We brought together partners, the African Development Bank, we have Africa 50, we have
07:04 several other partners that have joined us.
07:07 That's African Development Bank President Akinomi Adesina.