Africa’s ability to meet its almost limitless infrastructure needs requires a huge, coordinated agenda.
Around half the continent’s countries face dire debt distress, with risks of sovereign defaults high, debt service burdens crippling, and extreme climate events exponentially magnifying these problems.
The priority surely is new green infrastructure, which holds the key both to build better climate resilience and to drive growth, because it has been shown that countries prioritising green growth generate greater all-round growth by being better able to ride climate shocks.
Yet, apart from suffering disproportionately from money laundering and illicit smuggling of precious metals and minerals, African countries have mobilised the lowest share of private climate finance in the world: although their needs are the greatest, they receive the least help according to the African Development Bank.
And that despite infrastructure investment in low-carbon climate-resilient sectors in Africa offering very high returns for private climate finance.
Source: African Business
