Africa has all the potential to meet pressing climate challenges with innovative solutions, according to one of the world’s renowned environmentalists. With its vast natural capital and youthful population, “this is Africa’s century,” according to Prof Patrick Verkooijen, chief executive of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), and the new chancellor of the University of Nairobi.
But Verkooijen emphasises that support and investment from the global north is essential, highlighting that 65% of the world’s uncultivated land is in Africa, a continent with immense promise in its population, set to make up one in four people globally by 2050.
He described a “train wreck” scenario for the entire global south if promises made by the global north were not fulfilled before the Cop30 summit in Brazil in November 2025.
Verkooijen says global climate finance for adaptation was supposed to double by 2025 but is instead declining, jeopardising the UN’s sustainable development goals and threatening investment already made in resilience solutions.
“If you don’t invest in climate adaptation, how do you capitalise on opportunities for job creation, green growth and avoided losses?” he says.
The GCA, headquartered in the Netherlands, with offices in Ivory Coast, China and Bangladesh, is an international organisation working on climate adaptation worldwide, calling itself a “solutions broker”, and providing analysis on climate-proofing and food security.
Partnering with governments and institutions such as the World Bank to integrate climate adaptation expertise into their projects, GCA’s portfolio boasts $9bn (£7bn) in climate-proofed projects in Africa alone.
Verkooijen says GCA’s role is threefold: political mobilisation, providing climate-risk analysis and ensuring climate-proof development. Chaired by the former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, its supervisory board includes Macky Sall, the former president of Senegal.
Advisory board members include the president of Kenya, William Ruto; the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley; Tanzania’s president, Samia Suluhu Hassan; and the president of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina.
“We mobilise heads of state to talk about adaptation,” says Verkooijen, “because if they don’t, others won’t, and nothing will happen.
“In 2021, at Glasgow’s climate summit, climate adaptation was recognised as a central component of the climate crises debate for the first time.” But, he says, one of GCA’s significant hurdles remains finance.