← This Week in Global Development
This Week in Global Development
The Africa Climate Summit, and a new legal test for the Trump administration
00:28:50
This week, we were at the Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, closely following the stories that matter most to the global development community. From forging a unified voice ahead of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference to...
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- [00:05]
A
My name is Advaah Saldinger, and you're listening to this Week in Global Development, hosted by myself, Rumbi Chikamba and David Ainsworth. And this week we are going to be discussing some of the top issues in development, including the African Climate Summit, some of the latest developments in the legal challenges that are facing us, foreign assistance spending, and a number of other things that have popped up. So joining me today are Ina Mursi, who's a global development reporter here at devex, and our managing editor, Anna Gavel. First turn to you, Aina. You are currently in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, just having wrapped up the final day of the Africa Climate Summit. And so we're sort of tapping your brain just as you're trying to process everything and all the conversations you've had over the last three days. But I wanted to get a sense of your takeaways and also just to give our listeners a sense of what's the sort of significance or purpose behind the summit itself.
- [01:01]
B
Yes. So I'm coming at you from Addis, and this is the second ever African Climate summit. There was one two years ago in 2023 in Nairobi. And so this is really a pretty new initiative, a new type of convening, and they're bringing together all players from around the continent and really trying to encourage African countries to have a common position on a lot of climate issues. So part of this is just let's get all on the same page on a number of issues before cop. And, you know, so we're talking about things like carbon markets, we're talking about things like taxes. So just trying to make sure that everyone is on the same page before cop. Another big component of this has been, of course, the climate finance question. And so last year, a cop at Cop 29, we had the kind of the NCQG, which is an acronym that I think haunted me for weeks after cop. And it's the, it's basically how much money developing countries will get towards climate finance. And so we agreed last year the world agreed to $300 billion, which was, you know, kind of considered a paltry sum by the developing countries. But richer countries were as kind of all they were willing to fork over. And so the, you know, the year between COP 29, COP 30, has been this kind of Baku Tibelem roadmap, which is because in addition to the 300 billion, the agreement was that we could also try and work to get to $1.3 trillion, which is really closer to how much money we need. That's not really going to be in terms of like concessional financing. That's going to be a lot of. We don't know what that 1.3 is. It's just kind of an aspirational, lofty goal. Let's try and get to 1.3 somehow. So a lot of the conversations this week, the past couple of days have been how do we get to the $1.3 trillion that we really need? And so some of the conversations about this have been on car. I went to a couple of sessions that were all, every carbon market session I went to was just absolutely packed with participants. Everyone is dying to figure out how they work, how they can work for Africa. So that was a really, really well attended kind of subject matter area. So that's, that's one area. But, you know, one thing that keeps coming up is that, you know, because the 1.3 trillion, we don't know what the quality of finance is, we don't know what the mix is going to be. So one thing that I've heard repeated over and over again is that people are really don't want to make climate finance turn into climate debt. So that's been a big topic of conversation. It seems like at every, you know, kind of at every panel, at every event, people are talking about the debt burden and, you know, how much Africa is having to pay to service its debts and, and often at amounts that far exceed what it would need to spend to adapt to climate change in some ways. So we're trying to figure, a lot of the conversation is just trying to figure out how could we have innovative ways to attract capital so that Africa can adapt, but without necessarily taking on more debt?
- [03:48]
A
Do you get the sense that these conversations are more aspirational or are they rooted in sort of the current political and economic reality? And one of the reasons I ask is because we haven't really seen carbon markets, for example, deliver sort of perhaps, you know, I mean, there's been a lot of uncertainty in the markets in terms of how things would be regulated, how pricing would work, ensuring the quality of projects, et cetera, et cetera, and ensuring also that local communities actually benefit from the sale of carbon credits. So I'm sort of curious about that question. How much of this is aspirational? Here's what we wish would happen versus sort of in the reality that we're facing today.
- [04:28]
B
Yeah, I think that carbon credit conversation is still, still pretty, pretty lofty. I mean, I went to a conversation where the CEO of the Auda Auda was talking about carbon Markets could create, it could generate a hundred million dollars annually, create 30 million jobs on the continent by 2050. So we're kind of talking at these really, really big aspirational, best case scenario levels. But at the same time she was also talking about how they're working on building a continent wide coordinating mechanism for carbon markets. And so they're trying to create a document right now to articulate the continent's vision. So that's in the works, but I guess a step towards kind of making sure that countries are on the same page and maybe they can actually, you know, ensure like the integrity of carbon markets and that communities are actually getting something back. We're expecting that to launch at COP30 according to President. So there are some concrete steps being taken, but in terms of actual monetary value now, it's not really happening yet. But there were some, you know, there was actual money that was being pledged at this conference. And so there, there was probably the biggest one was this coalition of a bunch of financial institutions. So we had Africa Development Bank, Afrexim Bank, Africa Finance Corporation and a few other players. They pledged $100 billion in new commitments. And this is a continuation of the Africa Green Industrialization Initiative that was started in Nairobi in 2023 at the last summit. But this is $100 billion of new financing towards green industrialization. And so what they kept saying was that, that they're really hoping that this $100 billion would also help catalyze further investment from the private sector. And they're looking at things like critical minerals, of course, and battery manufacturing. And so we did see people really putting, putting their money where their mouth was.
- [06:15]
A
And so you mentioned this sort of new commitments as a follow on to the prior initiative. Does that mean that the sort of initial couple years of this initiative, they've actually been able to deploy the initial capital into these types of green industrialization projects. Do you get a sense that it's sort of succeeding and now they need to put more money in?
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B
I, I get a sense that it's still kind of too early to tell, although it's been two years, that some of it is succeeding and that people are happy with it. We're seeing a lot more, we are seeing a lot more activity and, and investment on green industrialization especially. I think that's kind of been a buzzword. So I think we, I would hesitate to say that it's been a total success from Nairobi from 2023, but it seems like it's going in the right direction.
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C
I was just going to really quickly say, I think what's just overall impressive is this effort from between 2023 to 2025 to speak as a unified bloc. I mean, I think we often Forget Africa is 1.4, 1.5 billion people. So that's a really powerful voice. And to get all these countries to speak as one voice, I often compare it. And I think you can relate advice, since you're also here in the US is we have 50 US states. Try getting them to agree on anything. And so, you know, just the progress and just the fact that this summit is taking place, this is the second one ahead of the, you know, cough I was just gonna point out. I think that's an achievement kind of in and of itself, really.
- [07:45]
B
Absolutely. And we're seeing this, like this leadership of emerging leadership of Africa and I think climate conversations. And I was just at a session earlier today with Rachel Kite, the UK climate envoy, and she said, we have African leadership not only for the African continent, but for the rest of the world. And I thought that was really interesting that she said that. And also I had a similar conversation with Mukhtar Babaev, The President of COP 29 in Azerbaijan last year. But he's also saying a lot of these countries are really emerging, especially Ethiopia and Kenya, with these really strong vocal leaders on things like climate. It's not just climate leadership in the continent that we're seeing from these guys. It's potentially global leadership as well. Yeah.
- [08:24]
A
And I think that dovetails with what I was going to ask, which is sort of what's next? Are there sort of key points that then have emerged from this summit that African leaders are going to take into copies? Do we think we'll see more African climate summits down the road? How has it sort of galvanized the opinion? Because I imagine there are still some differences on when it comes to climate on the continent as well. Right. Zanna said it is a challenge.
- [08:48]
B
Yes, yes. Yeah, there's absolutely still a challenge. I mean, we have such diverse countries, Right. We have countries like Nigeria, which is a huge oil producer and mostly, you know, very dependent on fossil fuels. And we have countries like, you know, Ethiopia and Kenya, which are almost all renewable on their grid. It's like over 90% for both of them. So it's a huge difference of starting points. But yeah, in terms of, in terms of what's coming next, we are, we're expecting the finalization of kind of an add to Sababa declaration that will outline some of the key points and points and the similar points that the continent will take going in, going into Bilan. Also in Bilan, we'll be looking at the formalization of some of these carbon market questions. So with the launch of that, of that AU led document, the NetPad led document, I think we'll see a little bit more structure coming from the carbon markets.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So I think we're all kind of looking towards Belem now. But also kind of as an interesting aside, one thing that I've learned from conversations here is that it's very difficult for people to get there from here. It's very expensive, the flights, the logistics, et cetera. And so that'll also be kind of a question as to kind of what participation in COP30 looks like from the African continent. I know folks are really trying to go, but from some countries it's, it's proving to be a little bit hard.
- [10:07]
A
That's such an interesting point because, you know, representation being there matters in these debates and in these conversations, but the logistics, I mean, it seems like a COP that has some logistical challenges on its own and then you add in the complications of this travel. Well, Inot, thank you and you know, we'll look forward to what more there is to come from your coverage there. I know. One other thing I just wanted to chat with you quickly about. I know you had a conversation with the African Development bank about their upcoming ADF replenishment. And I think, you know, that's something that a lot of people have questions about. We're in a pretty challenging environment for replenishment. And in that conversation a couple really sort of key interesting points emerged about how ADF is trying to adapt and evolve in this moment. And I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about that.
- [10:55]
B
Yeah, so one thing that we've known for a little while is that ADF was going to go to capital markets or was wanting to rather it's still in the process of trying to get that approval. So that itself we, we've been kind of eyeing that. One thing that I learned from a bank representative was that they've now managed to secure about two thirds of shareholder votes and they need 70, 67% to be exact and they need 75% of shareholder votes in order to have that go forward. So they seem pretty confident and optimistic. They're pretty close to getting that. And so if they're able to go to capital markets, that will allow the ADF to write raise an addition $5 billion per three years, which is, you know, it's on a three year replenishment cycle. Which would be a really big deal. So they're really pushing for that and they're really optimistic about their ability to do that. Another thing that I learned from a conversation, you know, that she emphasized that the red representative emphasized it. It's, you know, it's still in discussions, but they're looking at how can non sovereigns get involved with the adf? These are just, you know, the FTP was created a long time ago, right. It's so, it's Almost, it's over 50 years old. Some of the rules that apply to that institution might not necessarily apply to some of the younger institutions which might not have so many safeguards around things like non sovereigns participating or going to capital markets even. So they're looking at, you know, how do we, how do we potentially work with, with organizations with philanthropies, with people who have a lot of money to spend and, but might not necessarily get. We might not necessarily give them voting rights, but what else could we give them that could entice them to participating? So that was another conversation. And also, of course, the expansion of also sovereigns. So with the new president that we have, the FDP president that they have, Sidi Ult Tav, one of the things that was really attractive to him to some voters was that he had really strong ties with the Gulf. And right now we only have Saudi Arabia and Kuwait who are members of the FDB from within the Gulf. So will we see that expanding from countries like uae, et cetera, maybe. And he's also looking to countries beyond the Gulf as well to join.
- [12:59]
A
So it does sound like they're trying to sort of lean into creativity and making some changes to try to get to that goal that they have of making this the biggest ADF replenishment they've ever had. And just one, one note, this idea of, you know, the most concessional arm of a development bank going to the markets isn't new. The World Bank's IDA does this, but it hasn't been without its challenges. Right. I think one of the, one of the concerns is that it's made capital maybe more expensive for some of the IDA borrowing countries. Right. Because in the, you know, and I think what's true for ADF is that that money is grant money today, which is really important in the context of indebtedness, et cetera. So how does that change, does the funding become slightly more expensive if you go to capital markets? So it's, I think it's a, it will be an interesting balancing act. I know it's been one for ida. And so if they get this approval, I think the ADF will also the African Development Fund will also have to try to find the right balance between sort of pricing, concessionality grants, et cetera, and being able to draw this money.
- [14:00]
B
From the capital markets.
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D
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- [14:52]
A
Anna, I want to turn to you because one of the other big developments this week is that we have seen sort of a lot of back and forth in the legal challenges that some of the big implementers have brought against the Trump administration for foreign aid spending. And it's been sort of an interesting moment and something we anticipated. Right. But this, this week we saw the case actually go back to the Supreme Court. The administration challenged a lower court ruling and went to the Supreme Court and asked them to consider it. This is really a bigger story than just this one case. The underlying issue is really challenging, you know, who has power over appropriating money in the United States and spending and is it the executive branch or is it Congress? And so I think it's a really interesting moment, but I'm hoping you can give us a little bit of an update on where things stand with, with some of those legal challenges and what we know right now.
- [15:49]
C
Sure. And you know quite a bit about it because you've also been writing about it as well. I kind of call it the legal ping pong. And it's been a long running, well, relatively long running saga. I mean, it started in one of the main cases, started in February shortly after the freeze. But yes, yesterday we just got word from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. He issued an administrative stay, which is basically a pause on, like you mentioned, the lower court ruling which ordered the Trump administration to pay billions of dollars and I believe it's 4 billion, the 4 to 5 billion, I've heard both figures in foreign aid money that's already, like you said, been appropriated by Congress. It's part of this long standing battle. And like you said, it has wider implications because it's really about ultimately who controls who has the final say on government spending. Is it the executive, that is the White House or the legislative branch? Congress, which traditionally does hold the power of the so called power of the purse. But you know, President Trump has turned to budgetary maneuvers, I'll call them, to rescind money, to claw back money that he disagrees with. We saw this and I know you had a great explainer, budget explainer. But you know, real briefly, there was a recession over recession package over the summer and that Congress approved. So the Trump administration was able to claw back about $8 billion in foreign assistance. More recently, there's something called a pocket rescission, which is a little more legally controversial. It's dealing with about $4 billion in foreign assistance. But the package is submitted so close to the end of the fiscal year that the money may expire anyway with or without Congress's input. So the legal battle, you know, I mentioned that because kind of goes back to the legal battle of the billions that are in question. And the administration is arguing that, you know, you can't, this pocket rescission, rescission package is being debated. It's being considered by Congress. So we can't be compelled at the moment by a lower court to pay this $4 billion. And you know, I think again, the biggest thing to it in terms of logistics there is supposed to be, I believe the challengers are supposed to file a brief Friday and the Supreme Court could issue a ruling as soon as next week. And you know, this is really highly anticipated because like you said, this is not just about foreign assistance, it's about government spending. And to me, what's, what's really interesting is foreign aid was one of the initial, if not the very first target of budget cuts for the Trump administration. And so we're seeing this come a bit full circle where the legal, the legal ramifications of that are really going to set the tone for, for this broader discussion and hugely consequential discussion because then, you know, you're talking government spending, you're talking a whole lot more money than just the billions that are involved in foreign assistance.
- [18:43]
A
I think one of the things is, traditionally a rescission is an instrument that the government often uses actually when it has money that it can't out. You know, it's not something that's out of the norm, though. Perhaps it's been used more in this administration or at higher volumes than we've seen sometimes in the past. But I think the difference with this pocket rescission is that traditionally in a rescission, Congress has 45 days to respond, and this is sort of crunch time for Congress on a number of issues before the end of the fiscal year. So Congress could decide to act. That would actually kind of moot the current specific legal challenges that are at stake in this point if Congress decided to approve this rescission. But when there is a rescission document request sent up to the Hill, that money is frozen, Right? So I think that's sort of the part of the argument that's at stake. I think the plaintiffs have argued, you know, if, like this money is just going to expire, like the court doesn't compel the administration to act. And, you know, I mean, maybe that's the intention of the administration is to let this funding expire. And so I think there's there's a lot of interplay there. And I think there is a lot of questions then about spending, right. And what what sort of spending we'll see down the line if we'll see additional rescissions, et cetera. But it's definitely something that we'll be watching closely next week to see what the Supreme Court says. And one of the things I'll add is that I think it's also quite possible that the court will only rule on this narrow issue at first. I expect that it may end up there for the sort of some bigger questions and challenges around sort of government spending an impoundment. But for for now, what they might be deciding next week is actually just if they should stay the lower court order. And so we probably won't get all the answers we're sort of looking for on the bigger picture right away, but we will probably get some more answers pretty quickly given the sort of time pressure with the end of the fiscal year approaching really quickly. I know we're we're coming sort of short on time here, but there's another story that we have out this week that talks about an issue that I think doesn't often get too many headlines, which is sort of water and sanitation. And I think our colleague Jesse wrote this piece and she really goes into how critical wash in the water space is to underpin so many other things, right, about health, about education, et cetera. But there have been these sort of Long, ongoing debates and challenges around funding. And some of that comes down to, you know, if water is a human right, should people have to pay for it? And there have been these sort of ongoing debates in the space. Anna, I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about, about that piece and some of the sort of key debates or challenges that are facing the sector today.
- [21:31]
C
Yeah, it's, it's a great piece. And I think it highlights something like you said, wash water, sanitation and hygiene, which has been chronically underfunded. As Jesse points out, that problem is now compounded because it's underfunded even more because of, just like everyone else, the aid cuts. And like you said, I think water, water first of all is life. So, you know, it's, it's, it's very basic and, and I think we sometimes forget about the domino effect of sanitation and hygiene. You know, when menstrual products aren't available to girls, they often don't go to school. They don't go to school, they don't get an education. That affects gender equality, that affects the economic development of a country. You know, this is really such part of like a larger chain reaction. So it is a little surprising that it doesn't get the attention that its advocates say that it deserves. And part of it is what you touched on this kind of fundamental dilemma of is water a human right, a free human right, or an economic commodity or some combination of both? And this has kind of, you know, been a debate that the community has waged. I thought there was one expert who talked in Jesse's story about, you know, water is a human right, just like food is, but you still expect to pay something for food.
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B
So.
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C
But then on the flip side, you know, poor households can't necessarily pay for it, even though the data actually shows that the poor pay the most for water service. Governments often, often don't pony up the money. The private sector investment has always been lagging in this sector. You know, now everyone is looking to the private sector, to philanthropies, to MDBs, to, to plug the aid gap that we currently have. But, you know, I think that it's wash is kind of unique. It's, it's like, how do you, and you know quite a bit about this. You know, how do you invest in something? Should you invest in the infrastructure? Should you. As one other expert pointed out, is it institutional change? You know, you've had countries that have really made a push, like Singapore did in 1970s, to have, you know, eliminate a lot of Waterborne diseases, and they successfully did that. So there's also. It's not just about private sector investment into infrastructure. It's about willpower. You know, it's a lot of complex dynamics at play. And so I think that's what really makes it interesting because there's no easy solutions to anything. But WASH is, is really this whole world unto itself almost.
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A
Yeah. And I think the, the challenge with bringing the private sector in is that you have to have clearer markets and opportunities for making money. Right. And I think that one that relies on having effective systems and off takers that can pay for it. Right. And so there, you know, I also was struck by the fact that, you know, some of the poorest households actually pay the most for water. And I think that presents a real challenge. It just, it made me think of a story I wrote very early in my career almost 20 years ago when I was interning for a newspaper in, in Johannesburg in South Africa. I did a piece about essentially about water rights there. They had a system that was sort of pay as you go water. You had to pay upfront. Then you got X amount of water for the month. Once your money ran out, the water would no longer flow. And what we saw in one case in that community was a fire and the devastating impact of not having water because of this sort of financial structure around it. And so I think that that sort of highlights some of these questions that we're grappling with. Right. What is the right sort of financial model that respects the sort of human right of water, but also creates an infrastructure that the private sector can rely on and brings them into the conversation. So definitely some challenges there, but I think also a space for innovation. Speaking of innovation, I'm just going to go back to Inot really quickly because you had this story that I thought was interesting about a new sort of innovative satellite technology system that helps identify optimal grazing ground for cattle to reduce methane. Which I thought was sort of interesting and not something I had thought about. But I'm wondering if you can tell us just really quickly a little bit about that sort of time to graze project.
- [25:38]
B
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I didn't quite realize this either, even though I have reported on methane several times before. But basically it's a group. I mean, Global Methane Hub is this, this big consortium that is really focused on cutting methane emissions. And that's because although there's like methane last has a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere, it's much more potent than carbon dioxide. And so basically if you can reduce methane emissions, you can kind of people always talk about putting a handbrake on total emissions because it is just that it's just that much more potent than CO2. So people have been scrambling, looking at lots of ways to, to solve this methane question. And the biggest emitter of methane is the agriculture sector. And within that, a lot of it is livestocks and it's cows burping essentially. And so we're all trying to figure out how to make cows burp less. It's amazing how many brilliant minds are constantly thinking about this hilarious question. So one way to do this is. So basically cows in countries and regions where we don't necessarily have access to optimal animal feed, it's, it's not efficient, right? So they're, they have to maybe eat more to get the same level of nutrients if they're just eating kind of grass at any which point of its growth cycle. Whereas if you're eating like very tailored thought about food, it's, it's just optimized, right? So people are trying to figure out, okay, so how do we make it more efficient the way animals are feeding? And so one of these questions, one of the answers to this is actually the level of growth that like the height, the age of grass makes a huge impact on how nutritious it is. If you eat really young grass, it's actually, it does have a lot of nutritious value, but you have to eat a ton of it in order to actually get, get enough for it to be nutritious. If you eat when the grass, when it's too old, it kind of starts to lose its nutritious value. And so there's this question, like, how do we get cows to eat it when it's just, you know, it's very goldilocks, like just the right, the right length of grass. And so some, some researchers realized that you could really use technology and satellite imagery to start tracking this. I mean, satellite images are incredible. Now they're. The ones that they're using are like 10 by 10 square meters. So you can have a really detailed view of how long that grass is and help inform herders or, you know, people who hold livestock in more developed countries as well, to figure out, like, go this direction this day because the grass is long, and then make sure you switch to this direction the next day because the grass is long over there. And so they're just. See, it's at a pretty early stage right now it's just launched in eight countries, including a couple in East Africa and some in more developed countries with huge livestock sectors like Uruguay.
- [28:08]
C
So.
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B
So I think this just kind of highlights the level of exciting innovation in this space and has a huge potential to really tackle emissions.
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A
Well, I look forward to sort of hearing more about that and more of your reporting on calperps.
- [28:24]
C
Everyone, you know, so curious about cowperwps.
- [28:27]
A
All right. Well, Ayana, Anna, thanks so much for joining me today. This has been this week in global development. Thanks, Sam.