Climate shocks: Why young African activists are driving a strategy rethink
A continent battered by escalating climate shocks is being pushed by its young activists to abandon ritualised grievance and step into global negotiations with solutions that force the world to take Africa seriously.
Every year, African leaders travel to COP meetings to demand that the Global North honour its climate pledges. They return each time with little to show for their efforts. A new generation of African climate activists is now resetting the agenda for the continental leadership to truly make a difference.
As wildfires tore through South Africa's Western and Eastern Cape just days into the New Year, the immediacy to act against climate-disaster triggers couldn't be starker. Tens of thousands of hectares of farmland and mountainside were scorched by the fast-spreading fires, forcing emergency evacuations and prompting authorities to consider declaring the Western Cape a disaster zone.
In Limpopo Province, the tormentor was excessive rainfall. The South African Weather Service issued a Red Level 10 warning for heavy rain across Mpumalanga and Limpopo as floods ravaged the region. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who toured the affected areas last week, called the disaster "catastrophic".
For South Africa, this is a painfully recurring crisis involving fires, floods and displacement, often hitting the poorest communities the hardest.
Yet, what feels different in 2026 is not just the intensity of the disasters, but the urgency of the response. Conversations around climate action have begun unusually early in the year, driven by young Africans who say the continent can no longer afford to wait for COP meetings to start talking.
They are also challenging African leaders to rethink how they engage global climate negotiations. The familiar narratives of vulnerability and broken promises, usually overemphasised at annual COP events, are losing their power at a time when talks are shifting toward implementation.
Frustrations at COP
After two weeks of negotiations at COP30 in the Brazilian city of Belém last November, world leaders agreed to a series of commitments, including a call for developed countries to treble funding to help poorer nations respond to climate change.
African leaders were quick to express frustration. Kenya's Deputy President Kithure Kindiki warned that "the global fight against climate change will be futile unless financing pledges are honoured".
Rwanda's environment minister Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya highlighted the vast gap between what Africa needs for climate adaptation and what is actually being financed. She warned that even though overall climate finance to Africa had increased, less than a third of it had gone into adaptation needs. Lives are being lost while technical debates drag on.
Zimbabwe's envoy at COP30, Ambassador Tadeous Chifamba, emphasised the moral obligation of high-emitting countries to step up.
Such statements reflect a long-standing pattern at COPs: African leaders publicly berating wealthy nations for exacerbating climate impacts while failing to deliver promised funding. But African climate policy experts say that while these grievances are valid, repeating them without parallel solutions is weakening the continent's negotiating power.
Answers, not grievances
Ugandan Michael Kakande, who founded the pan-African youth-led network The Resilient40, says Africa's position is undermined by fragmentation and a persistent victim narrative.
"Africa must stop arriving at COP events as a continent deep in climate crisis. It needs to make its presence felt as a continent with answers. That is how negotiating power is built," Kakande tells TRT Afrika.
The climate activist argues that African delegations are often divided by national interests and donor alignments, limiting their ability to negotiate collectively on adaptation finance, resilient infrastructure and climate-resilient livelihoods.
Kakande leads continent-wide youth mobilisation efforts that place young Africans from frontline communities directly into climate decision-making under the Now Generation Network and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. He travels across affected countries ahead of UN climate talks to document local impacts and consolidate common positions.
"Yes, Africa is vulnerable, but we also have solutions. The only way Africa moves forward is by shifting the narrative from only showcasing loss to presenting solutions, innovation and leadership," he says.
Beyond lamentation
Ujunwa Ojemeni, an expert on climate action based in Lagos, argues that repeated lamentation without costed plans and implementation pathways makes it difficult for African governments to be taken seriously as climate-delivery partners.
"You cannot demand finance without showing what it is for, how much is needed, and how it will be delivered. When plans are not costed and pipelines are not prepared, ambition becomes rhetoric rather than policy," explains Ojemeni.
While African leaders frequently highlight failures by wealthy nations to meet climate finance commitments, she notes that they often land up at COPs without investment-ready projects, strong institutions or integrated national plans linking climate action to economic development.
"Ambition without data and preparation does not deliver results," Ojemeni tells TRT Afrika. "Political pressure alone does not deliver transition. Preparation, data, institutions and governance readiness are what turn demands into results."
Her work with young leaders, civil society organisations and governments focuses on building technical capacity around energy transition and climate finance, helping policy advocates understand how climate plans are costed, investment pipelines are structured, and what institutions can do to attract funding.
Frontline realities
Africa's vulnerability was laid bare throughout 2025. In South Africa's Eastern Cape, floods killed more than 100 people and displaced thousands. Botswana too received heavy rainfall that inundated parts of Gaborone, leaving at least nine people dead. In Nigeria, floods and a dam collapse near Mokwa claimed scores of lives and uprooted entire communities.
Along Nigeria's Niger and Benue rivers, flooding has become almost routine, washing away homes, farms and livelihoods. Erratic rainfall continues to undermine agriculture, still dominated by farmers with small holdings.
Nigerian climate scholar Ehireme Alexis Uddin warns of huge economic risks as the global economy shifts toward net-zero emissions. "Nigeria's primary export runs the risk of becoming a stranded asset. It's a double-edged sword. How do you mitigate climate change, adapt to its physical risks, and still manage an economy dependent on oil?"
COP30 exposed persistent gaps, including inadequate financing for adaptation, food systems and just transitions, while key negotiations were left unresolved.
Ehireme, who also works with the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, believes African governments must prepare now, long before they head for Türkiye to attend COP31.
"We can't keep going to COP and say the same thing every year. We can't wait for the Global North to just come and give us all this money. We need to be more proactive about what we can do within ourselves," she tells TRT Afrika.