Africa is acutely vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change, but Kenyan President William Ruto encouraged a narrative shift at the conference, focusing on accelerating the region's clean energy transition.
A final declaration from the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi is expected to call on the international community to help achieve that goal by easing the continent's crushing debt burden and reforming the global financial system to unblock investment.
Leaders will also demand that rich carbon polluters honor long-standing climate pledges for poorer nations.
Analysts say unity could generate momentum for a series of key gatherings leading to a crunch U.N. climate summit starting in November, including the G20 meeting in New Delhi this weekend.
But consensus is challenging across the diverse continent of 1.4 billion people, where some governments are championing a renewable-powered future while others defend their reserves of fossil fuels.
Competing visions of the world's energy future are likely to play out at the COP28 talks in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, where the world will take stock of the as-yet-inadequate efforts to slash planet-heating emissions.
The potential
Speaking at the Nairobi talks on Tuesday, Ruto said African leaders were envisioning a "future where Africa finally steps into the stage as an economic and industrial power, an effective and positive actor on a global arena."
Ruto says Africa is well placed to take advantage of the need to move away from carbon-spewing fossil fuels, boasting a young population, vast renewable potential and natural resources.
This includes around 40% of global reserves of cobalt, manganese and platinum crucial for batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.
Kenya has become a leader on renewables, pledging that they will make up 100% of its electricity mix by 2030.
Efforts at the summit to up investment in renewables were given a boost on Tuesday, with the UAE pledging $4.5 billion to accelerate Africa's switch to clean energy.
But there are daunting challenges for a continent where hundreds of millions lack access to electricity.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says Africa hosts 60% of the world's best solar resources, but only 3% of energy investments.
In a report published Wednesday, the IEA and the African Development Bank Group urged donors and development finance institutions to scale up concessional funding to encourage private sector investment in Africa's energy sector.
"Concessional capital of around $28 billion per year is needed to mobilize $90 billion of private sector investment by 2030... a more than tenfold increase from today," the report said.
Global overhaul
African countries facing mounting debt costs and a dearth of funds have called for a complete overhaul of the global financial architecture, adding to pressure on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to unlock investment and climate finance.
African nations, among the hardest-hit by global warming, are pressing the world's wealthy polluters to make good on their pledge to provide $100 billion a year for clean energy and to help them brace for climate disasters.
Vulnerable nations least responsible for warming have won recognition for the need to have separate funding to help them cope with the effects of the heatwaves, droughts and floods already battering communities across the world.
In a report released this week Oxfam said the devastating drought that has gripped Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia as well as floods in South Sudan, have caused losses of between $15 billion and $30 billion in the two years to 2022, or around 2 to 4% of the region's GDP.
It estimated that between 2021 and 2023 the four countries lost about $7.4 billion in livestock alone.
"Millions of already struggling people saw their animals die and lost their ability to grow, sell or eat nutritious food, plunging them into even greater poverty and hunger," the report said.
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