Addis Ababa, Feb. 15, GNA – Nana Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, Chairman of the Africa Group of Climate Negotiators (AGN), has called for urgent strategic alignment between Africa’s climate diplomacy, energy security and industrialisation agenda, warning that failure to do so could deepen the continent’s economic dependency.
He said global climate diplomacy had shifted significantly beyond emissions targets and long-term ambition to become increasingly intertwined with geopolitics, energy security, industrial competition, critical minerals and finance.
“These global shifts are reshaping Africa’s development options faster than our institutions are adapting,” he stated.
Dr Amoah, who spoke at a high-level dialogue convened by the African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) on the margins of the 39th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly in Addis Ababa, said African negotiators were being required to make deeper commitments under tighter constraints, even as the political and financial conditions to support such commitments remained uncertain and uneven.
He observed that decisions taken outside the UNFCCC framework—in trade, industrial policy and finance—were increasingly determining what was feasible within climate negotiations.
Dr Amoah warned that the continent risked accepting climate outcomes that appeared progressive on paper but ultimately proved restrictive in practice.
“If our climate diplomacy is not aligned with our energy needs and industrial ambitions, we risk locking ourselves into pathways that reproduce dependency rather than transformation,” he cautioned.
He stressed the need to place energy sovereignty, industrial policy and access to finance at the centre of Africa’s climate strategy, and called for stronger coordination among African institutions to address fragmentation between mandates and implementation.
Mr Louis Cheick Sissoko, Presiding Officer of the AU Economic, Social and Cultural Council, echoed the call for strategic coherence, noting that fragmented policymaking weakened Africa’s negotiating power on the global stage.
“Africa must move from being primarily a supplier of raw materials to becoming a strategic architect of its own development pathway,” he said.
He identified three major tensions confronting the continent: balancing energy access with decarbonisation; ensuring local value addition rather than continued raw material export; and pursuing climate ambition within shrinking fiscal space.
Mr Sissoko stressed that the global energy transition must not replicate patterns of green extractivism, emphasising that Africa’s critical minerals should support local processing, industrial upgrading and decent jobs.
He underscored that debt sustainability and equitable access to climate finance remained central to Africa’s strategic autonomy, linking the discussion to the aspirations of Agenda 2063.
(Courtesy: African Group of Negotiators Experts Support)
GNA
Edited by Lydia Kukua Asamoah
15 February 2026