Liberia: Africa Climate Week is an opportunity to lobby for divestment in the biggest drivers of climate change, says ActionAid International
As governments, multilateral organisations, private sector players, and civil society from across Africa converge in Nairobi, Kenya for the 2023 Africa Climate Week and the Africa Climate Summit, ActionAid says leaders must focus on the urgent need to divest from fossil fuels and industrial agriculture – the biggest drivers of climate change.
“As African leaders and policymakers deliberate in Nairobi, they must focus on increasing support for investments in real climate solutions such as renewable energy and agroecology. The huge and illogical financial flows to harmful industrial agriculture and fossil fuels simple can’t continue. Real communities and real families are counting on it.” Teresa Anderson,
ActionAid's Global Lead on Climate Justice, said.
The Africa Climate Summit and parallel events during the Africa Climate Week come against the backdrop of increasing temperatures, and extreme weather conditions such as recurrent droughts, and floods, that are threatening food security and livelihoods.
Mary Sakala, a smallholder farmer from Zambia said, “In Mumbwa, where I live, families are sleeping on empty stomachs, water tables have gone lower than expected making it impossible to irrigate crops to supplement the deficit for our food due to poor harvests recorded.
“Our animals travel as far as six to seven kilometres in search of water to drink as our nearby wells and borehole only yield water to drink and a few domestic uses only,” she added.
With global temperatures continuing to rise, vulnerable communities in the Global South will be the most affected. Africa Climate Week presents an opportunity to reflect and crucially take action on those financial flows driving the climate crisis. Governments and the private sector must commit to stemming flows of money to harmful industries such as fossil fuels
and industrial agriculture, and instead drastically ramp up much needed public funds for agroecology and renewables.
“The events in Nairobi come at a crucial time, as it is clear commitments by the Global North to address the climate crisis have not been met with action. ActionAid and our partners are spelling out the bold steps that the financial sector and government must take, urgently.” says Peter Kamalingin, ActionAid International’s Africa and Global Policy and Program
Strategy Director.
To contact the ActionAid Press Office email media-enquiries@actionaid.org or call +44
7586107955.
ActionAid has spokespeople available for in-person and virtual media interviews and
speaking opportunities.
There will be a briefing about ActionAid’s demands at the Green Park Bus terminus, Nairobi
at 15:00hrs on Monday 4th September, during the People’s Climate Summit. The following
spokespeople will be in attendance and available for interview:
• Susan Otieno, Executive Director of ActionAid Kenya, is in Nairobi and available for
interview.
• Teresa Anderson, Climate Justice Lead for ActionAid International, is in Nairobi and
available for interview
• Arthur Larok, Secretary General of ActionAid International, is in Nairobi and available
for interview.
• Peter Kamalingin, Africa and Global Policy and Program Strategy Director, ActionAid
International, is in Nairobi and available for interview
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 15 million people living in more than
40 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which
everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We
work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty