African Nations Face Painful Trade-Offs as Climate Spending Outpaces Health and Welfare Budgets
African governments are making steady investments in climate action, but a new report from DevTransform shows that these efforts come with painful trade-offs – with climate allocations in some cases exceeding government funds budgeted for key national healthcare and welfare programs. The report, released today at the Africa Climate Summit, also reveals the crushing weight of debt in Africa, with governments paying $20-$30 in debt repayments for every $1 invested in climate action. The study of ten national budgets exposes the “opportunity costs” of climate spending, and underscores the injustice at the heart of the climate crisis.
“African governments are already paying beyond their fair share to address a crisis for which they are least responsible,” said Martha Getachew Bekele, Director of DevTransform. “They are making consistent and deliberate investments in climate action, even under severe budget pressures. But this fiscal sacrifice comes with a very real human cost – in hospitals, classrooms, and welfare programs – as this report makes clear.”
The new report – More than its fair share: Africa’s fiscal burden in financing climate action amid development trade-offs and debt – analyzes climate allocations in the national budgets of ten countries: Cameroon, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Namibia, and Zambia.
The data reveal that, without new grant-based external financing, climate allocations risk displacing essential services such healthcare, education, social welfare, and infrastructure.
Some key findings from the report:
- In Ethiopia, the money set aside for climate action is more than double (204%) the Federal government’s budgets for universal health coverage, and nearly twice (182%) what it spends on maternal and child health, nutrition, disease control, and community healthcare.
- In Namibia, the government spends more on climate allocations than on hospital services, with climate spending about one and a half times (159%) the hospital budget.
- In Kenya, climate spending is almost three-quarters (74.8%) of what the government allocates to primary education.
- In Cameroon, the government spends more than twice as much (215%) on climate allocations as it spends on social protection programs, excluding pensions. ● In Ghana, climate allocations could finance more than half (53.9%) of the annual cost of road and bridge construction.
A double burden: Climate and debt
The analysis shows that debt servicing is now one of the largest items in African budgets, consuming between 10% and 30% of national budgets, on average. Despite this consistent pressure, governments continue to make deliberate and consistent allocations to climate action. But the debt pressures are enormous.
On average, the African governments in the study spend an equivalent of 10 to 30 times more on external debt servicing than on climate action. In Kenya, for every $1 invested in climate action, the government spends $29 to service its debt. In Ghana, the
figure is $21; in Cameroon, it’s $27. In Mali – a country with incredibly high vulnerability to climate change – the government spends $75 on debt for every $1 dedicated to climate action.
COP30 implications
The report calls on development actors to provide climate finance as grants and additional resources – not as loans that keep African countries trapped in a cycle of debt. The authors also call for greater support for debt cancelation to free up government funds for climate action.
“This analysis makes clear why COP30 must deliver debt cancelation and a new wave of grant-based climate finance,” Ms. Bekele said. “Without just international support, African countries will continue to be forced to face impossible trade-offs between protecting their
people from the impacts of the climate crisis and providing essential services like healthcare, schools, and roads.”
