Climate and energy

The UN General Assembly opened its yearly debate in New York on 22 September. The Secretary-General spoke first. He said that five large Western oil companies had made nearly half a trillion dollars in profit since Russia invaded Ukraine. He set that sum against the much smaller amount that poorer countries receive to adapt to climate change. For Africa, which faces rising drought and flooding, that gap decides whether farms, roads and towns can cope.

The next day the Secretary-General held a Climate Summit. It launched a Global Grids Accelerator to help build power lines. It also started new work on early warning systems for storms and floods. It also set up a support plan for countries that mine the minerals used in batteries and clean energy. That plan names five African countries, Guinea, Madagascar, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe, together with Indonesia. No money was announced for the grids plan or the minerals plan. On the same day Australia gave $100 million to a fund for Pacific islands. The five African mining countries so far have a place on a list and no budget behind it.

African leaders used the week to prepare for COP31, the UN climate summit in Antalya, Türkiye, in November. Kenya's President William Ruto coordinates the group of African heads of state on climate change. He met the group on 23 September and said Africa's climate agenda must now move from commitments to implementation. Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, who chairs the African Union Commission, warned against climate money that adds to Africa's debt. Ruto also asked for clean cooking to be part of COP31's plans for electricity. Only about 6% of households in Africa south of the Sahara cooked with electricity in 2024. Cooking is one of the largest gaps in Africa's energy plans.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) counts $26 billion in public money from abroad for adaptation in 2023, down from $28 billion in 2022. Developing countries will need between $310 billion and $365 billion a year by 2035. That is twelve to fourteen times what they now receive. Rich countries promised at the 2021 climate summit in Glasgow to double this money by 2025, and that promise will not be met. At COP30, the previous UN climate summit, governments agreed to at least triple it by 2035, to about $120 billion. Even that would meet less than two-fifths of the need.

Africa received $44 billion in climate finance in 2021 and 2022, about 23% of what its national climate plans need each year. Private companies and investors provided only 18% of that money. Half of the private money went to three countries, South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria. Most African countries therefore depend almost entirely on public money. When public money for adaptation falls, as UNEP's figures show, these countries have little else to turn to.

African mining countries have begun to control how much they sell. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) banned cobalt exports from February to October 2025. It then limited exports to 87,000 tonnes for 2026. The price of cobalt hydroxide, a partly processed form of cobalt, rose from about $5.50 a pound in February 2025 to $26 in April 2026. It stood at $22 to $23 in August. Zimbabwe sold 1.13 million tonnes of lithium concentrate abroad in 2025 and will ban such exports from 1 January 2027. Only one of its seven large producers is ready to process lithium at home. So far, these controls have raised prices without building many new plants in Africa.

African countries also lead the new trade in carbon credits between governments under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. They hold 57 of the 80 letters of authorisation issued so far. UN technical reviews have found errors in the first reports of these sales. Prices are low. On 1 September, credits from projects that hand out cleaner cookstoves were offered at $5.31 a tonne of carbon dioxide. Credits that airlines may use under CORSIA, the aviation industry's offset scheme, were offered at $14.50 a tonne. African sellers are taking the cheapest end of a market they dominate.

The UN fund for loss and damage, set up to help countries recover from climate disasters, holds $250 million. It has received about $2.8 billion in requests and has delayed its first grants to December. Countries hit by floods and droughts in 2026 will wait at least another year for help from it.

Mission 300 is a plan by the World Bank and the African Development Bank to bring electricity to 300 million Africans. Under it, Tanzania has connected 7.5 million people, Ethiopia 4.6 million and Nigeria 4.5 million. Over the past decade some countries have moved much faster than others. Between 2015 and 2024, the share of people with electricity in Rwanda rose from 23% to 72%. In Kenya it rose from 42% to 77%. In the DRC it rose only from 17% to 23%, and in Malawi from 11% to 16%. The countries with the most people still living without power are the ones moving slowest, and their governments have to explain why.

In the DRC, the minerals regulator, known as ARECOMS, says it may cut cobalt exports further if the market stays out of balance. In Zimbabwe, the Chinese firm Huayou owns Prospect Lithium. It has finished a $400 million plant at Arcadia that turns lithium into lithium sulphate. Two other Chinese-owned plants, at Bikita and Kamativi, are still being built. The finished plant has said it has no space for other suppliers. Smaller miners will have no buyer once the ban starts. Producers have asked for the ban to be delayed to March or June 2027.

Guinea is the world's largest producer of bauxite, the ore used to make aluminium, and exported more than 130 million tonnes in 2024. In August 2025 it took back the mining rights of Emirates Global Aluminium, because a promised alumina refinery had not been built. It handed the mine to a state company, and the two sides settled in May 2026. Guinea showed that a government can enforce a promise to process at home, although no refinery has yet been built.

Namibia's new climate plan will cost $14 billion, and about 88% of that depends on money from abroad. Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya have submitted climate targets for 2035. Kenya's carbon rules require 40% of the income from land-based carbon projects to go to local communities. Yet its new carbon registry had about 80 applications and no approved project by 31 July 2026. Communities cannot receive their share until the government approves projects and money starts to flow. Ethiopia will host COP32 in Addis Ababa in 2027, which gives Africa the chair of the talks for a year.

Africa is asking for money from funds that are small and shrinking. Its 81 requests to the loss and damage fund seek $1.4 billion, more than five times all the money the fund can give. Namibia's climate plan, like many others, rests on money from abroad that has not arrived. Plans written on that basis will not be carried out, so governments need to decide which parts they can pay for themselves.

Reaching 300 million people by 2030 needs about 55 million new connections a year. The pace since 2024 has been about 25 million a year. Rwanda and Kenya show what national policy can do, while the DRC and Malawi show what happens without it. Money from the new grids plan, when it comes, should be judged by whether it reaches the countries at the bottom of that list. Clean cooking belongs in the same plans, since so few households cook with electricity.

Africa's bargaining power lies in what it sells. Cobalt, lithium, bauxite and carbon credits are all in demand, and each has mostly been sold raw or cheap. An export tax that falls as each company builds its processing plant would keep pressure on buyers without the shock of a sudden ban. A shared minimum price and shared registries for carbon credits would stop African countries from undercutting each other. Officials at COP30 noted that many carbon credit prices leave out a cost to the seller. Each tonne sold is a cut the seller can no longer count towards its own climate target. A country that sells cheaply now will pay more later to meet its own promises. COP31 in Antalya, from 9 to 20 November, is the first chance to press both points.