Where is Africa in relation to the impact of, and the measures to address, climate change?
Climate change is real, as are the various environmental crises occurring around the world. Beyond the conspiracy theories of climate skeptics, the reality of our daily lives reflects the impacts of changing weather and climate conditions on human well-being. While historical timelines and centuries-old climate data may seem distant or abstract, the events of the last few decades are compelling enough to underscore the urgency of taking decisive action to avert the worst impacts and prevent an irreversible climate trajectory.
However, climate change and its impacts mean different things to different people and regions. While virtually every part of the world — including the rarely inhabited Antarctica — is experiencing adverse effects, the severity varies sharply. Despite the frequent climate-related disasters affecting developed, high-income economies and the massive economic losses incurred, the impacts on human lives (fatalities, displacement, and life-threatening outcomes) are relatively minimal when compared to underdeveloped, developing, low-income, and lower-middle-income countries. Furthermore, developed economies can generally absorb such losses and recover more quickly, while developing nations lack the economic strength and infrastructural capacity to respond effectively. In many of these countries, climate disasters intersect with existing economic, social, health, and political challenges, magnifying them and sometimes pushing societies toward crisis. This not only complicates efforts to address existing problems but also creates new ones.
This is the reality in Africa — a continent that contributes only marginally to global greenhouse gas emissions, the primary human driver of climate change, yet shares a disproportionate burden of its impacts. Despite its immense natural and mineral wealth, many African countries remain at the bottom of the global development and industrialization ladder. The continent continues to trail in global development due to centuries of slave trade, decades of colonialism, and more than six decades of post-independence neo-colonialism and neoliberalism. This situation is worsened by leadership failures, exemplified by kleptocratic political and business elites enriched by exploitative legacies dating back to the slave trade. Africa’s roughly 18 percent of the world’s population will therefore be disproportionately affected. Climate change not only threatens to keep the continent in its current low level of development but may also expose its economy to greater foreign control and exploitation.
Yet this is only part of the story. The climate solutions currently being promoted within the global capitalist framework risk creating a new form of imperialism and colonization in Africa — climate imperialism or climate colonialism (Ibrahim, 2023a). The transition from fossil-fuel-based energy systems to clean energy technologies, and the shift toward more efficient production systems, may leave Africa further behind based on current arrangements. As renewable energy systems expand in industrialized economies, Africa is increasingly becoming a frontier for fossil-fuel extraction. New oil and gas pipelines are emerging, and new onshore and offshore fields are being developed (African Energy Chamber, 2025). Fossil-fuel by-products such as plastics and fast fashion waste are being exported into African markets (West Africa Weekly, 2025; Nkatha, 2023). Beyond the environmental and ecological crises these developments create, they risk locking African economies into fossil dependency (Ibrahim, 2023b; Perrin, 2025).
For the roughly twenty-plus African countries reliant on fossil fuel revenues (IEA, 2022), the global shift toward clean energy poses severe risks. Declining fossil fuel demand will impact revenues, trade balances, and fiscal stability, plunging them into new cycles of debt and austerity. Worse still, fossil fuel prices are dictated by global markets dominated by multinational corporations and financial institutions, and African countries earn meagre value because most exports leave the continent in crude form.
These economic challenges are compounded by the environmental, ecological, and human costs of fossil fuel extraction. Exploration activities displace communities, destroy livelihoods, damage ecosystems, and pollute environments. Extraction has led to gas flaring, the contamination of water bodies, the destruction of aquatic life, and human rights abuses. These outcomes have been documented across virtually all oil-producing regions.
Adding to this, the clean energy transition itself poses new threats. Africa possesses significant quantities of critical minerals required for renewable energy systems. In 2024, the continent accounted for approximately 70 percent of global cobalt output, about 15 percent of copper, over 10 percent of graphite, more than 5 percent of lithium, and roughly 5 percent of nickel (as of 2022) (Ibrahim, 2025). Africa also has abundant renewable energy potential, including solar irradiation, wind corridors, and large water bodies suitable for hydropower (IEA, 2022). Yet, due to its low level of industrial development, the continent still depends heavily on imported renewable energy technologies. Africa has one of the lowest electricity generation capacities from both renewable and non-renewable sources, and an estimated 600 million Africans lack access to electricity (IEA, 2022).
Moreover, most critical minerals leave the continent with minimal value addition, resulting in the export of economic value. Thus, Africa exports resources necessary for building renewable energy capacity while importing high-value finished products from industrialized countries. Data shows that the continent imports mostly solar panels and cells from China, with only a small fraction being wafers required to manufacture them (Ibrahim, 2025). More advanced technologies essential for establishing a modern renewable industry are not imported. Consequently, Africa remains dependent on finished goods rather than manufacturing capacity. Hydropower dams — such as those in Mambilla, Nigeria, or Guba, Ethiopia — are built by foreign companies (Constructionreview, 2021; Webuild Group, 2016) that import equipment and retain technological expertise, repeating the same pattern seen in the fossil fuel era.
Meanwhile, critical mineral extraction remains largely unregulated. Artisanal miners, often serving as informal labour feeding illicit markets, and multinational corporations backed by global finance, control access to critical minerals (Tingini & Eniowo, 2025).. This has resulted in environmental devastation — deforestation, water contamination, ecosystem loss — as well as displacement, communal violence, and widespread human rights abuses. All of this demonstrates how an energy transition without justice, planning, and public ownership will reinforce the unjust economic systems that have historically underdeveloped Africa while enriching multinational corporations and local elites.
Another dimension is Africa’s limited participation in global scientific research and industrial innovation. (Adebayo, n.d.; WIPO, 2023). Despite its resource base, the continent contributes insignificantly to renewable energy manufacturing and climate-related research. Infrastructure for research, development, and industrialization is extremely limited (Njogu, & Nyaware, 2024; Ibrahim, 2025). As a result, Africa risks becoming a perpetual consumer of finished renewable energy products while serving primarily as a supplier of raw minerals. This dynamic sustains negative trade balances, permanent debt, austerity measures, and economic dependency — conditions akin to economic servitude. Since energy is a key determinant of industrialization and civilization, Africa’s development will continue to be controlled by external forces.
While developed countries scramble for African resources and markets for obsolete technologies, they simultaneously refuse to adequately fund climate action on the continent. If Africa contributes little to global emissions yet bears a disproportionate share of climate impacts, those responsible — industrialised nations and large corporations — have a moral obligation to pay reparations and climate taxes. However, Africa has received some of the lowest levels of climate funding since global commitments began. In 2023, the continent received just 2.5 percent of global climate finance — an amount that seems insignificant, especially when analyzed per capita. Worse still, most funding arrives as debt rather than grants, reinforcing financial extraction. Much of the grant funding eventually flows back to developed countries through procurement policies and consultancy contracts.
Funding for climate research is even more skewed. Since 1990, Africa has received less than 3.5 percent of global climate research funding. Most grants targeting African climate challenges originate from western funders and are awarded to institutions based in those same countries; African institutions receive only 14-15 percent (Ibrahim, 2025; Overland, et al, 2022).
Beyond energy and finance, Africa faces worsening environmental crises such as plastic pollution. While Africa’s total contribution to global plastic production is small, its share of mismanaged and littered plastic waste is significant due to inadequate waste management infrastructure. This exposes millions to serious health risks. Alarmingly, a large share of the plastic flooding African markets is imported — either as products or as used waste. (Ibrahim, 2025; World Bank Group, 2023; Massa & Archodoulaki, 2024). Plastic is a fossil-fuel by-product; reducing plastic pollution therefore requires reducing fossil fuel production.
As previously noted, Africa is becoming an expanding frontier for fossil fuel business. Although Africa’s overall emissions are comparatively low, they are rising significantly, driven in part by methane from gas flaring (Gunaratne, Liyanage, Punchihewa, et al, 2025). Meanwhile, large portions of the continent’s forests — especially in West and Central Africa — are being lost due to mining, fossil extraction, industrial agriculture, logging, and unplanned urbanization (Stanimirova, Harris, Reytar, Wang, & Barbanell, 2024).
Forest loss weakens Africa’s ability to moderate extreme weather conditions and reduces carbon absorption capacity. Rainforests in the Congo Basin are among the world’s most important carbon sinks. However, exploitation continues under the guise of global climate solutions, many of which exclude local and Indigenous communities while advancing the interests of foreign funders.
All of these conditions reflect the reality of climate imperialism and colonialism in Africa. Yet alternatives exist, grounded in African control of its resources and democratic, planned development. This cannot be achieved without:
Kola Ibrahim is a researcher, activist and public intellectual. He is a prominent activist, writer and author from Nigeria. He has authored more than thirteen (13) books and monographs. His books cover issues such as climate justice and political economy of climate change, global political economy, Africa’s development, working class and labour movement and youth. His recent publications include Climate Imperialism in Africa (2023) and Data for Climate Justice: Climate Colonialism in Africa through Numbers and Perspectives (2025). He is the director of a newly-founded and independent climate justice think-tank, Africa Research Centre for Climate and Economic Justice (ARCCEJ).
This article is an extract from the author’s latest book, DATA FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE: Climate Colonialism in Africa through Numbers and Perspectives.
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Njogu, H. and Nyaware, B. (2024). Renewable Energy Technologies in the Global South: Insights from Africa. South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). https://saiia.org.za/research/renewable-energy-technologies-in-the-global-south-insights-from-africa/
Nkatha, K. (2023). How fast fashion is fuelling the fashion waste crisis in Africa. Greenpeace Africa. https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/blog/54589/how-fast-fashion-is-fuelling-the-fashion-waste-crisis-in-africa/
Overland, I., Fossum Sagbakken, H., Isataeva, A., Kolodzinskaia, G., Simpson, N. P., Trisos, C., & Vakulchuk, R. (2022). Funding flows for climate change research on Africa: where do they come from and where do they go? Climate and Development, 14(8), 705-724. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2021.1976609
Perrin, F. (2025). Africa Still Heavily Dependent on Fossil Fuels. Policy Center for the New South. https://www.policycenter.ma/publications/africa-still-heavily-dependent-fossil-fuels
Stanimirova, R., Harris, N., Reytar, K., Wang, K. and Barbanell, M. (2024). Mining Is Increasingly Pushing into Critical Rainforests and Protected Areas. World Resources Institute (WRI). https://www.wri.org/insights/how-mining-impacts-forests#:~:text=Cobaltthreequartersofwhich,andtheTaiForesttreefrog.
Tingini, T.L., Eniowo, O.D. (2025). Breaking the informal cycle: integrating artisanal and small-scale mining into the formal economy. Miner Econ (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-025-00557-z
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WIPO. (2023). World Intellectual Property Indicators 2023. Geneva: World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). DOI: 10.34667/tind.48541
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