“Today, only 12 per cent of the current funding needs for climate adaptation in Africa are met. To increase the funding will not be easy. But there is no alternative,” Cheikh Mbow, Director of Senegal’s Centre de Suivi Ecologique, said when he held the opening remark at a climate finance workshop NORCAP organised with the help of CSE in Dakar this October.
Mbow underscored the urgent need for accessible climate funding to support African communities and nations.
NORCAP is a unit of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) that provides expertise and support to partners in crisis and climate change contexts. NORCAP and partner organisations have been driving work to secure climate finance for national institutions across Africa since 2015. Since 2019, CSE has been a key partner in this work.
The workshop was an effort to take the access to finance work further by bringing together key stakeholders from governments, meteorological offices, UN Climate Change funding bodies (UNFCCC), and the financial sector in Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Sierra Leone to tackle the critical barriers preventing these nations from accessing vital climate adaptation funds.
Securing such access is more critical than ever. As Hilde Jørgensen, NORCAP`s Head of Climate, addressed in her speech, the need for financial investment is immense and acute.
“Increasingly warmer temperatures, sea level rise, floods, and droughts have a devastating impact on the African continent,” she said, highlighting the need for urgent and scalable solutions.
The Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) reports that Africa needs a staggering USD 250 billion annually from 2020 to 2030 to tackle climate adaptation. Yet, despite being one of the most climate-vulnerable regions, Africa is facing unprecedented extremes—2023 was one of the hottest years on record, with temperatures soaring 0.61°C above the 1991–2020 average.
The workshop in Dakar was a central part of NORCAP’s strategy to unlock the financial resources needed for local climate adaptation. The lack of local technical and institutional capacity is a main obstacle for these countries in accessing necessary funding.
More specifically, the workshop identified common challenges for the participating countries, including cumbersome, time-intensive application and accreditation processes for major funding bodies like the Green Climate Fund and limited institutional and technical capacity at a national level to complete the application processes and develop bankable project proposals.
Other challenges are the lack of essential climate data needed to design effective projects and track ongoing climate impacts and the heavy financial burden of climate loans, which comprise up to 70% of climate funding and add to the already crushing debt load in many African countries.
To tackle these challenges, NORCAP provides technical support that strengthens the systems and skills of national institutions and closes the gaps preventing access to climate finance.
We have already taken crucial steps in Niger, where NORCAP has supported Niger in getting a readiness and preparatory grant from the Green Climate Fund.
Building on this success, NORCAP is now working with local governments and meteorological offices to expand its support to countries such as Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Senegal—countries that are vital to scaling effective climate adaptation solutions across Africa.
