Standalone climate strategy and integration of climate in overarching strategy

Overarching strategy

The AfDB’s “Ten-Year Strategy 2024–2033” recognises the “interlocking crises” threatening sustainable and resilient growth across Africa, including food insecurity, growing debt, demographic challenges, conflict and instability, and climate change.

Faced with this polycrisis context, the strategy recognises the deep interlinkages between climate change and economic development, with the twin strategic objectives of:

1. Accelerating inclusive green growth.
2. Driving prosperous and resilient economies.

To achieve this, the strategy is oriented around the AfDB’s “High 5” operational priorities:[1]

1. Light-up and Power Africa
2. Feed Africa
3. Industrialise Africa
4. Integrate Africa
5. Improve the Quality of Life for the People of Africa.

The Bank will contribute to the realisation of global sustainable development and climate goals through the High 5s, committing to elevating finance to “enhance adaptation, strengthen mitigation, and revitalise resilience”.[2] Climate change is recognised as a cross-cutting investment priority with the Bank committing to support African countries with adapting to its impacts, following “low-carbon development trajectories in line with the Paris Agreement”, and protecting biodiversity, the environment, and nature.

Climate change adaptation features as the predominant consideration for climate action in Africa throughout the strategy. This reflects the extreme vulnerability of African countries to the worsening impacts of climate change, and the corresponding core priority of building resilience.

On climate change mitigation, the strategy emphasises that Africa’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is minor and stresses the preexisting mitigation value in its carbon sinks, such as the Congo Basin Forest. Despite this, the AfDB commits to “prioritise low-carbon development” and contribute to global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 °C, aligning with international climate goals to “reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions”.

Notably, the AfDB makes the explicit commitment for its vision and actions under the ten-year strategy to “go beyond a ‘do no harm’ approach and towards enhancing development gains”, as set out in its Integrated Safeguards System.

In addition to the main ten-year strategy document, the AfDB has developed a Results Management Framework (RMF) 2024–2033 to guide delivery and monitor performance. The RMF includes indicators for measuring the Bank’s impact under each of the High 5s and cross-cutting investment priorities, as well as for enhancing the Bank’s operational and institutional model.[3]  Results will be captured in the Annual Development Effectiveness Review (ADER) issued by the Bank.

Although not detailed explicitly as part of the ten-year strategy, the AfDB has separately committed to aligning 100% of its operations with the building blocks (BBs) of the joint MDB framework for alignment with the Paris Agreement by the end of 2025. Before this, , the Bank committed to reach full alignment with the building blocks on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance (BB1–3). This phased approach is designed to provide greater leeway for alignment with the remaining building blocks (BB4–6), considered by the AfDB to be more difficult to implement. According to the Bank, BB6 will potentially be particularly challenging, given the requirements on corporate procurement, pension and trust funds, and staff travel.

Additionally, the AfDB has contributed to and will use the joint MDB methodological principles on Paris alignment. However, discussions with the AfDB suggest it also expects to develop its own dedicated methodology for Paris alignment, to provide greater granularity tailored to the Bank’s operations.[4]

Standalone climate strategy

The AfDB’s climate strategy is constituted by a framework on “climate change and green growth”, made up of three complementary documents:

1. A standalone long-term policy laying down overall foundational strategic principles and direction.
2. A Strategy for the medium-term period 2021–2030.
3. An Action Plan for the short-term period 2021–2025. 

This policy framework is responsible for enabling the AfDB to fully align its operations with the six blocks of the joint MDB framework for alignment with the Paris Agreement. Having dedicated documents to guide the Bank’s approach to combatting climate change in the short, medium, and long term reflects a best practice approach among peer institutions.  

The main standalone long-term Climate and Green Growth Policy document sets the strategic vision to enable a “climate-resilient, low-carbon, green, inclusive, integrated and prosperous Africa”. It commits the Bank to adopting a rigorous “do-no-harm” approach, but only with regard to biodiversity. Given the cross-sectoral nature of climate change, this is insufficient to be considered a true, cross-cutting “do-no-harm” commitment. Moreover, in light of the current state of climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and needs, the Bank should ideally be pursuing climate-positive policies through a commitment to “do good beyond do no harm”, such as through its focus on green growth.   

The strategy is oriented around four pillars: mitigation, adaptation, climate finance and enabling environment. 

The AfDB proposes four guiding principles for the four policy pillars:  

1. Boosting climate resilience and adaptation to climate change and reducing fragility.
2. Promoting low-carbon development and mitigation.
3. Leveraging climate finance and mobilising public and private sector resources for climate action and green growth.
4. Creating enabling environments for climate action and green investments.  

These are in turn accompanied by four areas of cross-cutting special emphasis:

1. Transition to green growth.  
2. Gender, youth and social inclusion.  
3. Private sector development and participation.
4. Robust and resilient economy.

Specifically on adaptation, the AfDB clearly recognises the particular climate vulnerability of the African continent. Against this backdrop, several measures are proposed. Notably, these include: the scale-up of climate change adaptation investments; the expansion of the policy, technical and financial support to African countries to bring adaptation investments to bankability; improving the tracking, measurement, and reporting of outcomes of climate adaptation investments; and aiding with government and subnational capacity-building.

In terms of mitigation, the Bank recognises the need to decouple economic growth from emissions by harnessing renewable energy generation and energy efficiency opportunities. There is also dedicated reference to the need for targeted actions in the land-use, land-use change and deforestation (LULUCF) sector, which is deemed responsible for 60% of Africa’s emissions.  

The (third overall) Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP3, covering 2021–2025) – which forms part of the Bank’s Climate Change and Green Growth framework – sets a comprehensive series of targets, actions, and reforms due by 2025. In a positive improvement from previous iterations (e.g. CCAP2), this is complemented by midterm (2023) targets. These are organised into action clusters, each featuring subactions with explicit implementation and reporting indicators. This reflects a strong level of granularity, in line with a best practice approach.  

The CCAP3 notably also includes a proposed Paris alignment roadmap for the AfDB in an annex. This breaks down action areas under each of the six MDB building blocks of Paris alignment (as well as overarching activities) and is accompanied by an indicative timeline for development and implementation. This reflects a strong level of transparency and commendable strategic planning for the AfDB’s full Paris alignment.

Recommendations: 

• The AfDB should consider either developing shorter-term (e.g. five-year) action plans to accompany the revised overall ten-year Bank strategy, or committing to a review of the new strategy, once it is in place. This would mirror the strong approach of its climate change policy framework, which features five-year action plans which themselves include tangible midterm targets. In the context of a rapidly changing external context, strategic responsiveness and adaptiveness are key requirements for effective institutional management, particularly in the context of climate action.
• For transformational, best practice performance, the AfDB should further develop its climate strategy by anchoring it in a 1.5 °C pathway that is sensitive to the context of the AfDB’s operations and member countries. This should involve considering longer-term climate-positive growth, deep decarbonisation and resilience pathways. The departure point for evaluating this pathway should be member countries’ own national transition planning. However, in view of the technical resource and capacity challenge countries may face in this regard, this should be complemented by drawing on other existing analyses from development partners (for example the World Bank’s Country Climate and Development Reports).
• The AfDB should follow through on its expectation to develop a dedicated Paris alignment methodology for its own operational context. In doing so, the Bank should consider undertaking an external expert consultation process. This would greatly assist with ensuring that the pitfalls identified retrospectively in the joint and individual methodologies published by other MDBs are avoided.

[1] The “High 5s” predate the AfDB’s Ten-Year Strategy 2024–2033 and have been linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement since their inception. The AfDB has set out detailed targets to be achieved by 2025 for each of the High 5s. However, these do not necessarily make clear the link to climate change goals. For example, the target of an additional 162 GW of electricity generation under “Light Up & Power Africa” is not further qualified in terms of how exactly this will be fulfilled in the broader context of a just energy transition (such as through specifying what proportion of this target should be from renewable sources).

[2] For each of the High 5s, the strategy sets out broad 2033 ambition, opportunities and challenges, and the AfDB’s corresponding priority action areas.

[3] The AfDB is due to publish a dedicated RMF paper, confirming final indicators and ambition (including concrete targets).

[4] Once such a methodology becomes publicly available, E3G will undertake analysis and update this section accordingly.