If climate finance is not grant-based and additional, governments may be forced to cut equity-enhancing programmes such as primary healthcare, maternal and child health and essential medicines, the report said.
African countries are pouring scarce resources into climate action, despite bearing little historical responsibility for the climate crisis. Often, this is at the expense of essential services such as healthcare, education, social protection and infrastructure.
New research by DevTransform, an African-based and African-led development organisation, shows that although governments are making steady budgetary commitments to climate programmes, these allocations are overshadowed by huge debt repayments.
Governments in the study spend 10 to 30 times more on servicing external debt than on climate action. In Kenya, for every $1 invested in climate action, $29 goes to debt repayments. In Ghana, it’s $21, in Cameroon $27, and in Mali — one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world — $75.
“These allocations are not symbolic,” the report said. “They are deliberate fiscal choices made at the expense of other urgent priorities.”
These steady allocations reveal both the opportunity costs for essential services and the injustice of expecting Africa to receive climate financing in the form of debt-based instruments, despite severe fiscal constraints.
The report, released on Tuesday at the second Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa, examined national budget data for the fiscal years 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 in10 countries: Cameroon, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Namibia and Zambia.
Alongside external debt servicing, the analysis highlights three intersecting concerns. These are that the countries’ climate allocations are significant, even in fiscally constrained contexts; there are potential trade-offs with essential services, in sectors such as health, education, and poverty relief; as well as a double burden, where countries must fund both climate action and external debt repayments.
Climate allocations are modest in size, ranging from 0.1% to 2.8% of national budgets, but stable across three years. This stability signals that climate action is becoming institutionalised, rather than dependent on donor support or one-off events.
“The consistent, if modest, presence of climate budget lines shows a foundation that can be scaled with international support, enabling countries to expand climate action without sacrificing health, education or infrastructure spending.”
For example, Ethiopia and Mauritania dedicated close to or above 2% of their budgets to climate action. Kenya, Ghana, Cameroon, Namibia and Zambia allocated 0.5% to 0.8%. eSwatini, Malawi and Mali allocated 0.1% to 0.5%.
The report said this is a significant effort given that all these countries fall in the “high vulnerability-low readiness” category.
On health, even relatively small climate allocations can displace vital health services in countries already facing debt and austerity. “Without additional support, governments risk a zero-sum choice between climate resilience and frontline health services,” the report warns.
In Ethiopia, for example, the money set aside for climate action is more than double (204%) the federal government’s budgets for universal health coverage, and nearly twice (182%) what it spends on maternal and child health, nutrition, disease control and community healthcare.
In Namibia, the government spends more on climate allocations than on hospital services, with climate spending about one and a half times (159%) the hospital budget.
If climate finance is not grant-based and additional, governments may be forced to cut equity-enhancing programmes such as primary healthcare, maternal and child health and essential medicines, the report said.
In education, in several countries, climate allocations rival or surpass education budgets, threatening human capital development. In Kenya, climate allocations equal 75% of the primary education budget and in Ethiopia, nearly 40% of the budget for all 47 national universities.
In some countries, climate allocations are large enough to replace or exceed key social protection programmes, forcing governments into a “painful choice” between long-term climate resilience and immediate poverty relief. In Cameroon, the government spends more than twice as much (215%) on climate allocations as it spends on social protection programs, excluding pensions.
And although roads are a lifeline for poor communities, connecting them to schools, hospitals, markets, and jobs, climate allocations are already eating into road budgets in several countries, the report said. In Ghana, climate allocations could finance more than half (53.9%) of the annual cost of road and bridge construction.
This means every dollar spent on climate could alternatively fund kilometres of roads maintained or feeder roads upgraded, which are essential investments for poverty reduction. The report calls for additional climate finance, layered on top of existing infrastructure spending, to avoid crowding out essential projects.
The analysis shows that debt servicing is now one of the largest items in African budgets, consuming 10% to 30% of national budgets, on average.
Development actors need to provide climate finance as grants and additional resources — not as loans that keep African countries trapped in a cycle of debt, the report said. The authors also called for greater support for debt cancellation to free up government funds for climate action.
“This analysis makes clear why COP30 must deliver debt cancellation and a new wave of grant-based climate finance,” said Martha Getachew Bekele, the director of DevTransform.
“Without just international support, African countries will continue to be forced to face impossible trade-offs between protecting their people from the impacts of the climate crisis and providing essential services like healthcare, schools and roads.”