Africa and German Climate Foreign Policy 2024

The first Africa Climate Summit in September 2023 marked a milestone in global climate politics. African countries made clear that they want to actively shape the global climate debate to seize the opportunities of the green transformation and shake the perception of being mere victims of the climate crisis. 

The formal outcome of the Summit was the Nairobi Declaration. The signatories have sent a strong signal to the global community with explicit promises to align their economic development plans with climate-compatible growth while implementing the energy transition in a socially just manner. The EU, Germany, and other states of the Global North have been encouraged to welcome African states as partners on an equal footing.

The African Union becoming part of the G20 in 2023 indicates that the international order is shifting. To strengthen co-operation, it is high time to recognise Africa’s changing role in Germany’s climate foreign policy. In this briefing, we highlight the three main topics of the Summit – finance, renewable energy, and resilience – and offer recommendations for German climate foreign policy with regard to African countries in 2024 as the German government is revising its Africa Policy Guidelines.