Determining climate finance needs in developing economies is critical to identify financing gaps and opportunities to guide stakeholders to effectively access, allocate and mobilize climate finance. Such data supports international policy processes, like the determination and implementation of a new collective and quantified goal on climate finance and accelerates action. The process of estimating needs also helps in assessing the effectiveness of climate finance flows.
51 out of 53 African countries that submitted Nationally determined contributions have provided data on the costs of implementing their NDCs. Collectively, they represent more than 93% of Africa’s GDP. Based on this data, it will cost around USD 2.8 trillion between 2020 and 2030 to implement Africa’s NDCs.
African governments have committed USD 264 billion of domestic public resources, about 10% of the total cost. USD 2.5 trillion must come from international public sources and the domestic and international private sectors. This externalinancial support, required beyond domestic public sources, is defined as “climate finance need”. While almost all African regions have expressed high needs (Figure 1), these could be underestimated due to a lack of capacity and guidance to make accurate assessments and a lack of data from subnational governments and vulnerable communities. Countries may not be able to provide as much domestic public finance as initially estimated given high debt levels amid unanticipated budgetary pressures — for example, from the COVID 19 c
