The Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) commences on Monday, September 8, with debates: while African leaders negotiate for vast sums of global climate financing, grassroots activists are insisting on mechanisms that cascade this funding directly to the local communities bearing the brunt of the crisis.
The three-day summit, expected to draw over 25,000 delegates, including heads of state, ministers, and private sector leaders, is convened under the theme “Accelerating Global Climate Solutions: Financing for Africa’s Resilient and Green Development.” Ethiopian officials have hailed it as “a defining moment” for the continent.
A central focus will be on reforming the global financial architecture and scaling up investment in adaptation, renewable energy, and carbon markets. This ambition was framed by Ethiopia’s Minister of Planning and Development, H.E. Dr. Fitsum Assefa, who highlighted Africa’s dual reality at a pre-summit press conference on Sunday.
“Yes, Africa is a victim of climate change, but it is also providing climate solutions,” said Dr. Assefa, who serves as the National Coordinator for ACS2.
She noted that the continent contributes less than 4% of global emissions yet suffers disproportionately from its impacts.
The summit is expected to produce the Addis Ababa Declaration, a unified African position to be presented at the COP30 climate talks in Brazil.
However, the push to “scale up” carbon markets has drawn caution from civil society. The African Coalition of Communities Responsive to Climate Change (ACCRCC) issued a statement warning against a top-down approach that could sideline the very communities managing Africa’s natural carbon sinks.
“Scaling up sounds good in theory, but in practice it often sidelines the very communities who live with and depend on these ecosystems,” the ACCRCC stated. “Cascading means ensuring finance, rights, and decision-making trickle down directly to the ward, village, and household levels where climate resilience is lived daily.”
The coalition pointed to long-standing criticisms of carbon markets, including opaque contracts, limited benefit-sharing, and weak community involvement in monitoring. They argue that simply scaling existing models risks repeating extractive patterns where international intermediaries profit while local livelihoods see little improvement.
The ACCRCC proposes an alternative model: leveraging Africa’s existing devolved governance structures and strong community associations—from Kenya’s community conservancies to smallholder agroforestry groups—to ensure carbon finance directly reaches grassroots institutions.
By adopting this “cascading” principle, the summit could help pivot Africa from being a source of cheap carbon offsets for the Global North to a pioneer of community-driven climate finance with integrity at its core.
Over the next three days, leaders will engage in high-level sessions and over 199 side events. But for many, the true measure of the summit’s success will not be in the pledges made, but in the architecture built to deliver them.
“Africa’s landscapes have served the world’s climate for centuries. It is time the world served Africa’s communities in return—from the top tables to the last mile,” the ACCRCC concluded.
