The African Development Bank, AfDB, has expressed readiness to raise $25billion by 2025 through the African Adaptation Acceleration Program aimed at climate adaptation in Africa .
This was revealed by the AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina on Tuesday, as he further lamented that the African continent was not getting enough resources to adapt to climate change.
According to Adesina who spoke on ‘Covid-Climate Emergency in Africa’, said Africa was only receiving 3 percent of climate funds, 7 percent less from the stipulated 10 percent accepted globally.
The AfDB President further called for global solidarity which should also transcend to decisive actions for the continent, as well as for its farmers to be secured against catastrophic risk events.
“Africa does not receive the resources it needs to adapt to climate change. Globally, 10% of climate findings go into adaptation and Africa receives just 3% of global climate funds.
“Africa needs global solidarity on climate change with nations to secure against catastrophic risk event and damage. We need solidarity for farmers on issues and challenges they did not cause.
“Our solidarity must translate to actions, the AfDB is taking decisive actions. We increased the share of our financing going to climate from 9% in 2016 to 38% in 2019 and we expect to reach 40% by this year,” he said.
Adesina further stated that the AfDB was following stipulated laws by the UN to development banks in devoting 50 percent of climate resources to financing adaptations.
Listing some of its achievements, the AfDB President stated that the bank was supporting the large scale climate initiative in Africa to build the largest solar zone in the continent by renewable energy to over 200million people.
He added that the bank in 2019 donated 2.6million draught tolerant maize to farmers to deal with draught ravaging East African countries like Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia amongst others.
