Photo Credit: The Sun Nigeria / CCDA-XIV
Onuigbo Urges African Leaders to Move From Climate Pledges to Action

Former member of the House of Representatives and President of GLOBE Legislators International, Rep. Sam Onuigbo, has called on African leaders to take ownership of climate action and champion initiatives that drive implementation on the continent.

Onuigbo made the call while speaking at the Fourteenth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-XIV), holding at the United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The conference, themed “From Pledges to Implementation: African Agency and the Belem-Antalya-Addis Roadmap,” brought together dignitaries from across the world to assess Africa’s role in global climate governance.

According to him, Africa’s climate challenge has moved beyond vulnerability to agency. While Africa has contributed the least to historical greenhouse-gas emissions but suffers severe climate impacts, he said that argument, though still valid for demanding climate justice, finance and technology transfer, must now be followed by African-led action.

Onuigbo commended the ClimDev-Africa Programme and its partners — the African Union Commission, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), and Afreximbank — for providing a platform for dialogue and collective action.

He outlined three key focus areas for the continent:

1. From participation to agency: Africa, home to critical minerals and surrounded by oceans, must set the tone and shape the rules, institutions, finance and implementation pathways that determine its future.

2. From pledges to implementation: Pledges must be translated into laws, budgets, projects, accountable institutions and measurable outcomes for Africans.

3. Building leadership through African institutions: Africa’s climate leadership must be built through African institutions, capital and authority, with international finance playing a supporting, not controlling, role.

Citing Nigeria’s Climate Change Act 2021, which he sponsored, as a practical example, Onuigbo said the Act provides a statutory framework for climate action and created the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) chaired by the President, to solve the problem of inter-agency rivalry and ensure high-level coordination.

“Fifty years ago, General Murtala Mohammed declared in Addis Ababa that ‘Africa has come of age… The fortunes of Africa are in our hands to make or mar.’ Fifty years on, that charge is the argument of this presentation,” Onuigbo said. “Africa’s climate future will not be granted by pledges made elsewhere, nor rescued by interventions we wait for. It will be built, financed, governed and defended by Africans, on terms Africa itself has written.”

He stressed that while international diplomacy has strengthened climate ambition through conventions and NDCs, the real test for Africa is whether the institutions, financing, technologies and political will to implement those commitments exist — and who controls them.
Source: The Sun Nigeria –