Session participants at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Friday, November 7, 2022. The event has been heralded as “Africa’s COP” . Photo : Seth Onyango, bird story agency
Negotiators from the continent say the real contest at the UN climate talks is over money, minerals and who gets to profit from the energy transition. But before African negotiators can argue over climate finance at COP31, they must first fight for the right to discuss it.
By Seth Onyango, bird story agency
04 November 2026
African negotiators will open COP31 in a dispute over what the summit is allowed to discuss, before any argument over how much rich countries owe.
Eleven years after the Paris Agreement required developed countries to provide financial resources for climate action in developing economies, Africa’s chief negotiator is still fighting for a place on the agenda to discuss that obligation.
Securing it at COP31 would count as a significant result, says Nana Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, because it would give countries a platform to press for the public money needed to protect livelihoods and finance development.
Amoah, chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) on Climate Change, told bird story agency that “there is no agenda item within the UNFCCC as we speak that provides space to discuss public financing”.
The bloc wants one created under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, the 2015 provision that obliges developed countries to provide financial resources to help developing ones. Wealthy governments have so far resisted and the chair expects the same to happen again.
“There is a likelihood that they will oppose the adoption of the agenda because of the inclusion of this agenda item,” he said, speaking from South Korea, where he was attending a Green Climate Fund board meeting.
For the continent’s negotiators, simply keeping the item alive would count as a result.
“Getting it maintained for a conversation for us is going to be a big success,” Amoah said.
Omar Elmawi, convenor of the Africa Movement of Movements, said the summit should be judged on what it delivers: “Africa does not need another layer of ambitions, declarations and initiatives without the means to deliver them.”
The summit, hosted by Türkiye with Australia leading the negotiations, opens on 9 November and runs to 20 November. The modest ambition on the agenda shows how far the African position has shifted.
For three decades, the continent argued that it was a victim of a crisis it did little to cause. But Amoah affirms that argument has largely been won.
“If you see almost all the key decisions that have been arrived at, it is as a result of the African continent,” he said, pointing to the Green Climate Fund, which he called “the baby of the African continent”.
What has not been won, however, is the money. At COP29 in Baku in 2024, countries agreed a collective goal of at least $300 billion a year in climate finance for developing nations by 2035, set inside a broader $1.3 trillion mobilisation target drawn from all sources, including private capital.
The $300 billion goal also allows public and private sources. It is not an exclusively public or grant-based commitment, making the terms of delivery a continuing point of contention.
Amoah wants public financing, including grants, given a distinct negotiating space rather than subsumed into the wider discussion of mobilising capital.
He warned that need is rising while support is shrinking. “We are seeing decline in climate financing, not only climate finance but also official development assistance,” he said, arguing the problem is built into the architecture.
The record of the previous finance pledge helps explain the distrust. Developed countries first exceeded their commitment to mobilise $100 billion annually in 2022, two years after its original deadline. The OECD puts the total at $136.7 billion in 2024, but subsequent increases have not erased the earlier delay.
A structural weakness
The climate convention and the Paris Agreement place financial obligations on developed countries, but securing and enforcing delivery has remained difficult.
Amoah credited the International Court of Justice’s 2025 advisory opinion on climate obligations with changing the conversation. He argued that weak enforcement had limited countries’ ability to compel financial support, using the example of Germany providing money to Ghana.
The Paris Agreement already contained binding obligations before the opinion. The court clarified states’ existing climate duties and the legal consequences that can follow breaches, rather than making a previously voluntary agreement binding.
Advisory opinions are not themselves binding judgments, and how far this one will move negotiating rooms remains untested. But Amoah suggested it has given African diplomats a firmer footing, with the possibility of gradual changes.
That is the argument already won, according to AGN. The one the continent now wants to win is about economics, and it is being made with unusual bluntness by those closest to the talks.
Kudakwashe Manjonjo, a just transition adviser at Power Shift Africa, rejects the idea that justice and commerce are separate tracks.
“There is no separation in terms of climate justice and economic opportunities,” he told bird.
He posited that growth will itself build capacity for adaptation, for coping with loss and damage and for seeking better financing.
Going to COP31, African negotiators and advocates see the continent’s critical minerals as a potential source of leverage in securing better deals.
Cobalt, lithium, manganese and other minerals critical to batteries and renewable technology are among the resources African countries want to turn into industrial opportunities.
Amoah asked why Africa should “just mine and export these minerals in a raw form”. Industrialising, he said, means a “second look at how these resources are tapped and then processed.”
Manjonjo said that logic is already shaping the bloc’s behaviour. The African Group, he said, are clear that “there will be no transition without our minerals.”
Shady Khalil, a senior global policy strategist at Oil Change International, put it more pointedly during a media briefing last week.
“We’ve been told we are not powerful enough, but we are in a position of power,” he said. “Transition minerals are in our ground.”
The weak point in the strategy The most candid assessment of the bloc’s weakness came from Amoah himself. Western governments, he noted, negotiate resource deals one country at a time.
“The advantage of the West is that they negotiate these issues country by country,” he said. When a wealthy government approaches Kenya or Ghana for a natural resource, “it’s not a matter of the African group.”
His conclusion was that African capitals must align their domestic policies with their collective demands “so that we can be able to walk the talk.”
Hope Dlamini, a strategist at Africa Change Lab, made a similar point about the deals themselves.
“We often think that negotiating with rich countries from a position of mineral wealth gives us the upper hand,” she said, “but we can undermine ourselves through the deals we sign.”
Some analysts doubt the leverage is as strong as advocates claim. Aly Khan Satchu, an economist, said geopolitical turmoil has pulled Western attention elsewhere and left the continent’s bargaining power suppressed.
“I am concerned that against this backdrop COP31 will fade a little for now and that specifically Western Governments’ bandwidth is being used in saving their bond markets and sourcing fuel and therefore Africa’s leverage at this time is muted,” he said.
He pointed to capital being absorbed by artificial intelligence, a shortage of funds in the Middle East because of war and bond market stress in Europe.
“In this context, repricing lower of Africa risk has probably run its course, for now,” he said.
On whether African states can capture more value from their minerals, he was sceptical. Processing, he said, depends on leaders acting in the national interest, and “this is not yet proven”.
Seble Samuel, head of Africa campaigns and advocacy at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, said the energy crisis has exposed the risks of dependence on fossil fuels.
“We need international cooperation grounded in global solidarity and fair finance to advance an equitable transition from fossil fuels that supports this vision for a renewable powered future.”
On financing, Dlamini noted that many African governments borrow in foreign currencies to build infrastructure while earning revenue in local ones, so repayments balloon when currencies weaken.
“We cannot finance a just transition through debt structures that make clean energy increasingly unaffordable and unattractive,” she said.
Simphiwe Ngwenya of South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission wants finance to reach local governments, asserting that is where the rubber hits the road.
Rather than call for a new just transition fund, Manjonjo argued for redirecting existing finance towards industrialisation and the energy transition.
He cited World Bank spending on minerals supply chains, arguing that more of that money should be channeled into industrialisation rather than transport corridors alone.
Electrification and its limits
That scrutiny extends to the summit’s own headline initiatives. The Turkish presidency is promoting a pledge for electricity to supply 35% of global final energy consumption by 2035.
Amos Wemanya, a senior climate adviser at Power Shift Africa, called the agenda a historic opportunity but warned that electrification without energy justice is not progress.
He said nearly 600 million Africans lack electricity and that the continent receives just 21 percent of the finance needed for renewable energy, transport and universal energy access.
“Africa cannot simply exchange fossil fuel dependence for debt dependence, foreign control and a new era of mineral extraction,” he said.
Dlamini said connection numbers alone tell little. “Electrification is a means to an end, not the end itself,” she said. Asked whether AI data centres should be part of Africa’s electrification plans, she said “it is not a priority for Africa at present”.
She questioned whether such investments would improve local access, affordability and productive capacity, or add demand to electricity systems already struggling to serve people.
The debate follows the agreement at COP28 in Dubai to contribute to transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner. That decision established a direction, but left countries facing difficult choices over financing, infrastructure and the distribution of costs.
**What would count as success at COP31 **
The African Group has three stated priorities: advancing the climate finance agenda; putting the just transition mechanism mandated at COP30 in Belém into practice; and ensuring governments lead the development of indicators to measure progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation.
On the third priority, Amoah warned against leaving decisions to outside experts, arguing that this would weaken Africa’s influence over how adaptation progress is assessed. Handing that process to experts, “which are mainly from developed countries, is suicidal for us,” he said.
Civil society groups are also drawing harder lines. A position paper shared by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance says Africa “cannot continue to pay three times for a crisis it did not create,” through climate impacts, inaccessible finance and a transition that reduces the continent to a supplier of raw materials.
It also warns that “unilateral measures such as CBAM risk imposing new costs on countries that contributed least to the climate crisis,” referring to the European Union’s carbon border levy, which entered its definitive phase in January.
Amoah said a climate and trade workshop launched in June remains fragile, but has opened a new avenue for discussion.
Meanwhile, as Ethiopia gears up to host COP32 in Addis Ababa next year, Amoah sees the summit in Antalya, dubbed an implementation COP, as the foundation for it.
“Once we are able to get a decision here, Ethiopia will pick it up, and then we start building it up from there,” he said. The goal, he added, is to “bring back hope into multilateral” cooperation at a time when many see it fading.
bird story agency
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