A new report by Development Transformations (DevTransform) shows that despite African governments making steady investments in climate action, painful trade-offs are being made, with climate allocations exceeding government funds budgeted for key national healthcare and welfare programmes.

DevTransform is an African-based and African-led organisation that supports African negotiators, policymakers and advocates through data, evidence and analysis.

The report, released on Tuesday at the Africa Climate Summit in Ethiopia, also reveals the crushing weight of debt in Africa, with governments paying $20 to $30 in debt repayments for every one dollar invested in climate action.

In a press release, a study of 10 national budgets, including Kenya, exposes the “opportunity costs” of climate spending and underscores the injustice at the heart of the climate crisis.

The budget study of the 10 African countries highlights the hidden costs of climate action and strengthens calls for grant-based climate financing ahead of COP30.

Director of DevTransform Martha Getachew Bekele said African governments are already paying beyond their fair share to address a crisis for which they are least responsible.

“They are making consistent and deliberate investments in climate action – even under severe budget pressures – but this fiscal sacrifice comes with a very real human cost in hospitals, classrooms and welfare programs, as this report makes clear,” she added.

The new report – more than its fair share: Africa’s fiscal burden in financing climate action amid development trade-offs and debt – analysed climate allocations of Kenya, Cameroon, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Namibia and Zambia.

The data reveals that, without new grant-based external financing, climate allocations risk displacing essential services such as healthcare, education, social welfare, and infrastructure.

Some key findings from the report are that in Kenya, climate spending is almost three-quarters (74.8 per cent) of what the government allocates to primary education. in Ethiopia, the money set aside for climate action is more than double (204 per cent) the federal government’s budgets for universal health coverage and nearly twice (182 per cent) 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 per cent) the hospital budget.

Other countries are Cameroon, whose government spends more than twice as much (215 per cent) on climate allocations as it spends on social protection programmes, excluding pensions and Ghana, whose climate allocations could finance more than half (53.9 per cent) of the annual cost of road and bridge construction.

The analysis further shows that debt servicing is now one of the largest items in African budgets, consuming between 10 per cent and 30 per cent of national budgets, on average.

Despite this consistent pressure, governments continue to make deliberate and consistent allocations to climate action. But the debt pressures are enormous. On average, the African governments in the study spend an equivalent of 10 to 30 times more on external debt servicing than on climate action.

In Kenya, the report says that for every $1 invested in climate action, the government spends $29 to service its debt. In Ghana the figure is $21, in Cameroon it is $27 and in Mali, a country with incredibly high vulnerability to climate change, the government spends $75 on debt for every $1 dedicated to climate action.

The report has called on development actors to provide climate finance as grants and additional resources, not as loans that keep African countries trapped in a cycle of debt, but for greater support for debt cancellation to free up government funds for climate action.

“This analysis makes clear why COP30 must deliver debt cancelation and a new wave of grant-based climate finance,” Ms Bekele said, adding that 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.

The African Climate Summit is convened under the leadership of Ethiopia in collaboration with the African Union Commission from September 8-10 and its outcomes will be reflected in discussions during COP30.

• A Tell Media / KNA report / By Wangari Ndirangu