Budget study across 10 African countries highlights the hidden costs of climate action and strengthens calls for grant-based climate financing ahead of COP30.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (9 September 2025) – 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.”
About DevTransform
Development Transformations (DevTransform) is a mission-driven, African-based and African-led organization that supports African negotiators, policymakers, and advocates through data, evidence, and analysis. Operating at the intersection of financing for development, climate, and crisis, DevTransform contributes to the reform and design of innovative financing mechanisms that advance equitable, sustainable, and resilient development in Africa, with lessons and influence that extend globally
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Jacques Pauw (South Africa)
Most Impactful Work: The President’s Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and out of Prison (book) and his work for Vrye Weekblad and Special Assignment (SABC).
Short Bio: A veteran South African investigative journalist, Pauw has a long history of exposing government corruption and atrocities, particularly during and after the apartheid era. His book, “The President’s Keepers,” caused a national sensation by detailing allegations of corruption and state capture under former President Jacob Zuma.
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Skirble
Van is getting married, but he and his fiancee have never done the deed – in fact he\’s never been with any woman before. He\’s getting more and more nervous as the big day approaches, so he confides in his friend. His friend says \’No worries man. I\’ll come by the honeymoon suite before you guys get there, and I\’ll hide behind the curtain, and I\’ll whisper instructions to you.\’
\’You\’d do that for me?\’
\’Sure thing man!\’
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\’Sure thing babe.\’
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\’What\’s that smell?\’
\’Nothing babe,\’ he wife tries to assure him.
\’No man there\’s definitely something not so lekker in this room!\’VSo Van starts looking around the room, in the corners, in the cupboard, and finally he looks under the bed, and sees the shoebox.
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And from behind the curtain his friend yells, \’NEE MAN, DRAAI HAAR OM!\”
Sapiens
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