Africa’s Climate Future in a Fragmented Multipolar World

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AfricaApril/May 2025vol9-no2
Climate

Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC.

THE MINISTRY OF CLIMATE CHANGE X THE ENVIRONMENT

Africa’s Climate Future in a Fragmented Multipolar World

Africa’s ability to shape its climate future in a multipolar world depends on deepening feminist, decolonial and intersectional approaches to foreign policy, development cooperation and justice.
Climate

Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC.

THE MINISTRY OF CLIMATE CHANGE X THE ENVIRONMENT

Africa’s Climate Future in a Fragmented Multipolar World

Africa’s ability to shape its climate future in a multipolar world depends on deepening feminist, decolonial and intersectional approaches to foreign policy, development cooperation and justice.

Multipolarity in the international political system is not new. Since the emergence of the twenty-first century, international relations scholars and practitioners have debated the shift from the United States of America’s unipolar power in global political affairs to multiple centres of power across the globe. The diffusion of power emerged as a challenge to western economic, political and military hegemony. Prominent countries such as China, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, India, Japan and South Korea are the new great and middle powers showing their influence in global governance across different thematic areas.

For African nations, this changing landscape presents both opportunities and challenges. Middle powers offer alternative development models and strategic partnerships. Yet history has shown that shifts in global power do not automatically lead to more equitable relations. African feminist scholars, including Dr Charmaine Pereira, Prof. Sylvia Tamale and decolonial feminist scholar Françoise Vergès, have pointed out that while alliances like BRICS+ may offer an alternative to western-led cooperation, they do not necessarily dismantle the deep-rooted hierarchies of exploitation. If these partnerships are not approached critically, they risk reinforcing Africa’s economic and political dependence rather than breaking from it.

What makes this moment different is not just the redistribution of global power but the crises unfolding alongside it. Unlike past shifts, today’s geopolitical tensions unfold amid a poly-crisis of climate emergency, gender inequality, democracy’s backsliding and conflict requiring multilateral action. Yet, multilateralism is under attack. These attacks are particularly strong from countries that previously championed the rules and norms of cooperation and institutionalism in international affairs.

SHIFTING POWERS AND FUNDING

The rise of state and non-state actors funding and driving pushback against gender equality, human rights and climate justice has weakened principles of multilateralism. Moreover, these coordinated attacks are strengthened by solidarity from the international systems’ traditional and emerging powers. ODI-ALIGN Platform’s 2023 research on the resourcing of anti-feminist and anti-democracy movements reveals that between 2009 and 2018, a group of 54 organizations based mainly in the United States, Russia and Europe were engaged in anti-gender activism with funding of more than $700 million.

Not only has funding been redirected toward anti-gender and anti-democracy movements, but African countries must also navigate competing priorities in securing climate and development resources. Since the so-called ‘end’ of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, overseas development assistance flows from the Donor Assistance Committee to African and Asian countries have decreased. This downward trend reflects donor countries’ efforts to stick within domestic budgetary goals amidst growing pressure from far right and nationalist movements to curb spending public funds outside their borders. Further worsening this crisis, is the growing prioritization of national security interests, particularly in Europe. This changing landscape shifts resources away from Africa’s critical development and climate action needs.

 Malawian historian, Paul Zeleza, notes the impact of reduced overseas development aid from European countries. These countries have traditionally supported humanitarian and core development aid. Germany, the second-largest provider of development and humanitarian aid, has cut funding by over €4.8 billion ($5.3 billion) between 2022 and 2025. France has reduced its aid budget by over $1 billion, while the United Kingdom has slashed its budget by over $900 million. The Netherlands—historically known for supporting women’s rights movements, democracy, economic development, climate and education—announced that from 2027, it would cut its annual development aid budget by €2.4 billion.

CONTRADICTIONS OF FEMINIST FOREIGN POLICY

Even as these countries slash their development aid budgets, they have, at some point, adopted a Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) or Feminist Development Policy. Whilst there is no set definition of FFP, it hinges on the idea that states adopt feminist principles across elements of foreign policy ranging from trade and development to climate change to security and other elements of international politics. Adopting the feminist label creates the impression that these countries drive a transformative agenda that shifts to a more equitable international system; one that centres the voices and knowledge of women activists, movements and political actors within their own countries and partner states.

However, this has not been the case. African feminists Nimco Ali and Aya Chebbi note glaring discrepancies between feminist foreign policy rhetoric and practice. Their 2023 article, ‘Opinion: Feminist Foreign Policy Activism Can Harm African Women’, unpacks how this concept threatens to harm African women. Harm emerges as these countries inform African countries how to prioritize women’s and girls’ rights, often through a narrow and programmatic lens. This limited perspective overlooks critical issues such as failing to vote for the draft terms of references of the United Nations International Framework Convention on Tax Cooperation. The proposed new legal framework aims to create a system of international tax cooperation, which would benefit developing countries through equitable taxation and tackling illicit financial flows.

For African countries, who were key drivers of the convention, it means curbing illicit financial flows, increasing domestic resources and expanding their ability to fund essential public services such as education, healthcare and water and sanitation. These are key sectors for advancing gender equality and improving the lives of African women and girls.

Contradictions of the FFP agenda emerge in other thematic areas such as defence and climate. As articulated by Ali and Chebbi, Germany is the fourth biggest arms exporter and has allowed arms exports to violate international human rights law. This fundamentally contradicts its stance on the genocide carried out by Israel in Palestine, where gender-based violence is systematically used against Palestinian women and girls, whose lives are not considered critical in the FFP agenda.

In their analysis, African feminist scholars and writers, Toni Haastrup, Rosebell Kagumire, and Helen Kezie-Nwoha outline nine principles critical for developing feminist-informed foreign policies, both domestically and internationally. These principles are shaped by the knowledge and experiences of African feminist and women’s rights movements, which are often excluded from global discussions on development and climate cooperation. Three principles are particularly relevant to this argument: challenging increased global militarization, recognizing the climate crisis as a feminist issue and centring reparations and restorative justice in development cooperation.

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CHALLENGING INCREASED GLOBAL MILITARIZATION

Haastrup, Kagumire and Kezie-Nwoha highlight the expansion of foreign military bases and power across African countries. At least 13 foreign countries including the United States, China, France, Japan, Russia and Saudi Arabia have established military operations on the continent. Djibouti alone hosts military bases from seven different countries. This east African country is located at the entrance of the Red Sea, underscoring its geostrategic importance in global economic, security and trade frameworks. However, this militarization serves the national security interest of western, Asian and European powers rather than prioritizing the well-being of African communities. This trend illustrates how security is framed from masculinist perspectives as armament and military training, and how economic benefits from military diplomacy triumph human security needs of communities and citizens of host nations.

The analysis of Fekade Terefe and Mulugeta Tesfaye, researchers from Good Governance Africa, of foreign military bases across the east African region reveals two key risks. Firstly, there is the rise of military clashes between global powers contending for more access to military bases and harbours within strategic regions such as East Africa. They note that in 2008, the United States accused China of hurting its military operations in the region. In the contemporary moment, regional and global powers’ rivalries can worsen growing conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. Secondly, foreign states often leverage humanitarian aid, infrastructural development and military training to advance their strategic goals, potentially overriding the sovereignty and priorities of host nations.

In April 2016, the African Union Peace and Security Council raised concerns about the increase of foreign military bases. These concerns cited links between militarization and the illegal trade of arms to non-state actors. Increased weapon proliferation places women and girls at heightened risk of gender-based violence and displacement. Increased militarization is not only a security threat but also an environmental one. The military and defence sector is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, contributing to climate change and the degradation of landscapes and seascapes. Adopting a feminist-informed foreign policy framework would shift the focus from military security to human security, reducing environmental degradation and reinforcing the territorial integrity of African nations.

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THE CLIMATE CRISIS AS A FEMINIST ISSUE

African women and girls’ heightened vulnerability to the impacts of climate change is not their own making. This demographic, cutting across class, ability and geographical divide bears the brunt of climate-induced disasters. Collectively, African countries have contributed to at least four per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, they are faced with increased extreme weather events such as the 2023-2024 El Nino-induced drought that affected southern Africa. The drought contributed to severe food shortages, displacement of people, crop failures and water shortages. Similarly, in East Africa, almost 1 million people across Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia were impacted by flooding and landslides from the heavy rains brought by the El Nino phenomena.

African feminist movements and activists have long argued that these climate disasters and vulnerabilities are consequences of the extractivist development model. A 2020 report by ecofeminist researchers Margret Mapondera, Trusha Reddy and Samantha Hargreaves, ‘If Another World Is Possible, Who Is Doing the Imagining?’, notes that extractivism thrives on women’s undervalued paid and unpaid labour. Patriarchy and capitalism intersect to subject women to extreme exploitation of their labour, bodies and territories. Due to the sexual division of labour, women are socialized to be responsible for social reproduction. When illness from polluted air or water bodies emerge, women take care of the sick. In moments of forced removal or loss of access to common lands, women’s capacity to produce food and shelter for themselves and their families is reduced.

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CENTRING REPARATIONS AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION

Reflecting on these climate realities, I am reminded of a narrative by a spiritual healer and community leader from Bikita. During a session on Just Transition Africa at the 2024 Fifth African Philanthropy Conference in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Gamuchirai Munesi shared how lithium mining is disrupting her community. Munesi is one of many women in southern Africa interacting with the Shine Collab, which advocates for gender-just energy solutions that change the systems and structures at the root of climate and inequality crises. She emphasized that the community is not against renewable energy but resists the destruction of their land, spiritual practices and sense of being. As the world transitions to renewables, African communities are sacrificed for decarbonization goals, reflecting a broader pattern of exploitation embedded in global climate and development politics.

This pattern of exploitation highlights why the African Union’s 2025 Year of Reparations: Justice for Africans and People of African Descent is critical. The theme underscores the continental body’s commitment to addressing historical injustices ranging from the trans-Atlantic slave trade to colonialism, apartheid and genocide. As articulated by the Institute of Security Studies Africa, this theme takes advantage of the push towards a change of global governance structures. It signals a shift toward structural transformation within the international system.

Through collective power in the AU and regional alliances, African nations are working to assert themselves in global governance. The AU’s increasing presence in spaces such as the G20, where it recently became a permanent member, and its push for a seat on the UN Security Council highlights the continent’s desire to be on equal footing with other global actors. However, the success of these efforts depends on ensuring that calls for reparations translate into tangible redistributive justice, rather than symbolic inclusion in global governance spaces.

Within multilateral spaces such as the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention, African and global majority nations continue to demand adequate climate financing to address the realities of climate change. However, these negotiations often fail to confront the structural drivers of the crisis such as colonialism, capitalism and extractivism. A feminist and decolonial-informed approach to foreign policy must place reparations and restorative justice at the core of development cooperation. This includes holding historically high-emitting countries accountable for funding climate adaptation, financing loss and damage and supporting sustainable development that prioritizes community well-being over corporate profit.

TOWARD A FEMINIST DECOLONIAL CLIMATE FUTURE

A feminist, decolonial and intersectional approach has the power to radically transform Africa’s climate future. By challenging exploitative global systems and centring African women’s voices, knowledge and lived experiences, this approach confronts the root drivers of climate and gender inequality. These challenges cannot be solved through tech-based solutions or blended climate finance models that do not reach the most affected communities. The interlocking systems of oppression, patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism and extractivism demand a deeper shift. A feminist decolonial climate future looks like African countries prioritizing human security over militarization, pushing for a reimagined global financial architecture, expanding social services and placing reparation and restorative justice at the centre of development cooperation.

African women’s rights and feminist movements have long engaged their governments and regional bodies on issues related to the attainment of the rights of women and girls in all their diversities. Political scientist Professor Melinda Adams’s 2019 study, ‘African Women’s Rights Movements and the African Union’, notes that while the AU has made strides compared to its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity—especially through Agenda 2063’s Aspiration 6—there is a still a gap between commitment and action. The AU’s policies and institutions are entrenched in patriarchal practices that make sustained progress toward gender equality difficult. Despite these realities, African women’s rights groups pushed member states to adopt the 2003 Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

Now, in a moment shaped by growing anti-rights movements and the rise of conservative and anti-LGBTQ influence at the AU, African feminists are once again called to action. As the AU and African Group of Climate Negotiators take bold stances on reparations and climate justice in the global arena, there is a strategic opening. An opportunity to push beyond symbolic inclusion and demand reparative justice, feminist multilateralism and climate futures rooted in principles of Ubuntu, care and freedom. A feminist decolonial and intersectional approach to Africa’s climate future in a multipolar world requires us to dream and act beyond the confines of patriarchal and exploitative systems⎈

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