Quantifying international public finance for climate change adaptation in Africa

Journal article, 2021

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, international financial assistance is expected to support African and other developing countries as they prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The impact of this finance depends on how much finance is mobilized and where it is targeted. However, there has been no comprehensive quantitative mapping of adaptation-related finance flows to African countries to date. Here we track development finance principally targeting adaptation from bilateral and multilateral funders to Africa between 2014 and 2018. We find that the amounts of finance are well below the scale of investment needed for adaptation in Africa, which is a region with high vulnerability to climate change and low adaptation capacity. Finance targeting mitigation (US$30.6 billion) was almost double that for adaptation (US$16.5 billion). The relative share of each varies greatly among African countries. More adaptation-related finance was provided as loans (57%) than grants (42%) and half the adaptation finance has targeted just two sectors: agriculture; and water supply and sanitation. Disbursement ratios for adaptation in this period are 46%, much lower than for total development finance in Africa (at 96%). These are all problematic patterns for Africa, highlighting that more adaptation finance and targeted efforts are needed to ensure that financial commitments translate into meaningful change on the ground for African communities.