Ghana President, Akufo-Addo has told the maiden Africa Climate Summit 2023 currently ongoing in Nairobi, Kenya that his administration, in its efforts to protect water and forest bodies placed a ban on illegal mining activities, widely known as galamsey.
According to him, “some 20,000” young people have been engaged to plant “more than 30 million” trees in two years to restore degraded lands.
“We have also introduced major policy interventions that have developed climate projection imperatives.
“Our flagship programmes, whether they are the programmes for planting for food and jobs, or one village one dam, or one district, one factory, are all geared towards boosting industrialisation and rural development, as well as building our resilience to the impacts of climate change,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo also outlined measures his government had rolled out towards combating climate change.
According to him, the policies of his government, including the industrialisation drive, aim at achieving the goal of reducing climate change, as anticipated by the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Kenya summit has gathered several leaders in Africa, as well as around the globe, including the United Arab Emirates and the Americas, to discuss financing climate change in Africa.
It is being held on the theme: ‘Driving green growth and climate finance solutions for Africa and the world’.
The summit is to define a common African position towards the deliberations of COP28 in Dubai.
President Akufo-Addo further told the gathering Wednesday that Ghana’s determined contributions towards combating climate change have been merged into its programmes to guarantee “their implementation.”
According to him, the strategic focus of the one village, one dam policy was to ensure all-year-round access to water for small-holder farmers in the northern part of the country to sustain their livelihoods during the long dry seasons.
“We are also determined to make natural gas, which we have in abundance, available for the generation of electricity,” he remarked.
He believed that these policies “are yielding positive results” toward the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly to reduce carbon emissions.
In addition, he mentioned the establishment of an advisory group that is setting up a $100 million SGD delivery fund and a $200 million green fund to complement the government’s efforts.
INTERNATIONAL
At the same summit, other African presidents, such as Ethopia’s Sahle-Work Zewde, Macky Sall of Senegal, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Mada Bio of Sierra Leone took turns to share steps being taken in their respective countries.
António Guterres, UN Secretary General, also addressed the summit.
President Akufo-Addo had used previous international fora to send a strong message to Europe and other continents that make up the 20 countries with the highest emissions of carbon to financially support Africa to combat climate change.
Addressing the summit in Nairobi yesterday, he repeated the advocacy on the back of the pragmatic efforts Africa, with its modest resources, was taking to fight climate change.
He noted that while African countries at the national level were exerting energies and resources on the issue, a lot more should be seen on the international front.
FUNDING
“One major issue of concern to us is the need to streamline access to international climate financing to complement national funding,” he stressed.
It was the hope of President Akufo-Addo that the summit would shed more light on practical ways to mobilise financial resources to support the implementation of national climate actions.
His focus was on how to guarantee a different future from the past and ensure that the commitments of the developed world towards climate financing that have not been met in the past will be fulfilled in the future.