Joint Statement
4 September 2025
H.E. Dr Fitsum Assefa, Minister, Ministry of Planning and Development of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
&
Mr Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary, UN Climate Change
This Climate Week has shown that no continent holds greater potential than Africa for climate actions that transform lives and economies for the better.
With the world's youngest population, vast natural resources, unparalleled renewable energy potential, and extraordinary diversity and human ingenuity, Africa is a colossal coiled spring of climate action possibility. This Climate Week has shown that African innovators are putting forward pioneering solutions to boost climate resilience and cut planet-heating emissions.
However, it has also highlighted again that only a fraction of this potential has yet been realized. Global decarbonisation is charging ahead, with clean energy investments hitting $2 trillion last year alone, driving economic growth and millions of new jobs, but only a fraction of that investment is flowing to African nations. The Climate Week has again shown climate adaptation can be truly transformative through protecting communities, people, businesses, infrastructure and creating new development gains, as it is as crucial for climate justice as it is for safeguarding infrastructure and communities. But despite these huge dividends, available at relatively low cost, Africa remains starved of adaptation investments at scale.
Recent Climate COPs delivered concrete global agreements that should materially benefit Africa and other developing regions: a historic Loss and Damage fund at COP27, just transitions to clean energy and transformation across other sectors that leaves nobody behind, and a global goal on adaptation at COP28, a tripling of climate finance to developing countries - to be scaled up to 1.3 trillion annually by 2035 - and operational carbon markets at COP29, among others.
But to realize these benefits, COP30 must take the next concrete steps forward: with ambitious outcomes which convert agreements into results on the ground, and scalable solutions which drive a new era of implementation.
This Climate Week was deliberately timed to build momentum for the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2). Next week in Addis Ababa, leaders will gather in unity, urgency, and purpose. The Summit is Africa's platform to project climate leadership that is impossible to ignore, setting the stage for nations around the world to prepare for COP30.
The ACS2 is an unmissable opportunity to send a message loud and clear.
The message is clear: Africa is ready to supercharge climate action. But COP30 must ensure Africa is fully enabled to do so. In short: COP30 must deliver for Africa and its 1.5 billion people. Because when all nations are empowered to take bold climate actions, this strengthens the entire global economy and lifts up all the world's 8 billion people.
