African governments looking to COP summit for higher climate financing share

By Duncan Miriri

NAIROBI (Reuters) - African countries want to use this year's U.N. COP meetings to secure a much bigger share of global climate financing, their representatives said at a meeting in Kenya on Thursday, to help deal with the increased threats from climate change.

African negotiators have drawn up a list of strategies which will be presented to a pre-COP 29, or Conference of the Parties, preparatory meeting of African ministers of environment in Ivory Coast next month.

The 54-nation continent has been attracting more funds for climate mitigation and adaptation projects in recent years, but it still gets less than 1% of the global climate financing on an annual basis, government officials said.

"One percent for Africa in terms of financing is a joke," Alice Wahome, Kenya's minister for housing and urban development, said at the meeting.

The 1% is of the global climate financing estimated at just over $100 billion, while Africa requires investments of up to $1.3 trillion, officials said, without providing a time frame for by when the amount is needed.

Limited access to external funding is forcing many governments on the continent to allocate parts of their budgets to climate adaptation measures, said Raila Odinga, a Kenyan politician who is vying to become the head of the African Union Commission at an election set for next year.

Such extra expenditure comes at a time when many African economies are already struggling with debt, said Ali Mohamed, the co-chair of the African group of climate negotiators.

One way of increasing Africa's share of climate cash is to boost access to existing global funds set up for the purpose, Mohamed said, such as the Green Climate Fund and the Global Adaptation Fund.

Kenya has enacted laws to allow for issuance of sovereign green bonds as a way of increasing its share of climate finance, the country's Finance Minister John Mbadi said at the meeting.

The East African nation is also in talks with development partners on innovative green financing deals to funnel debt payment savings towards projects, Kenyan officials said, without providing further details.

(Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Marc Jones and Shounak Dasgupta)