By Our Reporter
5th Sept 2023
The Kenyan President William Ruto has noted that Climate change is “relentlessly eating away” at Africa’s economic progress and it’s time to have a global conversation about a carbon tax on polluters.
This was contained in Ruto’s address today the second day of the first Africa Climate Summit taking place in the Capital Nairobi Kenya
The rapidly growing African continent of more than 1.3 billion people is losing 5% to 15% of its GDP growth every year to the widespread impacts of climate change, “Those who produce the garbage refuse to pay their bills,”Ruto said.
The summit’s opening speeches included clear calls to reform the global financial structures that have left African nations paying about five times more to borrow money than others, worsening the debt crisis for many.
Africa has more than 30 of the world’s most indebted countries, Kenya’s cabinet secretary for the environment, Soipan Tuya, said.
The U.S. government’s climate envoy, John Kerry, acknowledged the “acute, unfair debt.”
He also said 17 of the world’s 20 countries most impacted by climate change are in Africa while the world’s 20 richest nations, including his own, produce 80% of the world’s carbon emissions that are driving climate change.
Ruto said Africa’s 54 countries “must go green fast before industrializing and not vice versa, unlike (richer nations) had the luxury to do.”
Transforming Africa’s economy on a green trajectory “is the most feasible, just and efficient way to attain a net-zero world by 2050,” he said.
The United Arab Emirates, which will host the next United Nations climate meeting, announced it plans to invest $4.5 billion in Africa’s “clean energy potential.”
The African continent has 60% of the world’s renewable energy assets, and more than 30% of the minerals key to renewable and low-carbon technologies.
One goal of the summit is to transform the narrative around the continent from victim to assertive, wealthy partner.
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