Rabat, 8 October 2025 (ECA) – Climate change is presenting a significant threat for North Africa, making the "growth first, adapt later," approach no longer adequate. Instead, the subregion needs to come up with a new development model that is more focused on resilience, is less resource intensive (materials and finance) while able to generate enough good quality, sustainable jobs.
On October 1st, 2025, participants in a webinar by the ECA Office for North Africa on “Leveraging climate finance for decent jobs in Africa, challenges and opportunities,” which included experts from ECA, UNCTAD, the World Bank and the African Group on Climate Negotiations, gave a stark warning about the impact of climate change in North Africa and examined opportunities for adaptation.
A climate change hotspot, North Africa is facing significant threats including temperature hikes, collapsing water resources, and more frequent extreme weather events. These phenomena could lead to the loss of up to 11 percent of its l GDP per capita for a 1°C increase in average global temperatures – far more than the 8 percent loss feared for the African continent as a whole.
Growing now and adapting later is an outdated and risky approach
The world is now entering a new phase of climate change that weather models are not yet able to estimate accurately. Experts expect this phase to come with a higher risk of climate shocks that could lead to economic, social, and health issues, and consequently an increase in countries’ debt when forced to borrow to repair the damage.
Here's the issue: if countries’ national GDPs keep decreasing while their debts keep increasing, there will be a time when their debt will no longer be sustainable, warned Zoubir Benhamouche, an economist at the ECA Office for North Africa. Given this situation, « growing now and adapting later » is not only an outdated approach, it also comes at a significant risk given countries’ limited access to external finance and its high cost.
As North Africa, and Africa in general, struggle to achieve structural transformation, their economies face high unemployment rates and employment fragility, especially for women and youths, climate change is expected to bring about forced structural transformation that may become adverse to employment if not properly anticipated and managed.
“There is a risk that climate change will negatively impact livelihoods, at the same time, Africa needs to generate over 15 million jobs annually, to keep up with its demographic dynamics and spur structural transformation. By 2030, over half of new entrants in the global labour market will be African,” said Giovani Valensisi, an economist at UNCTAD.
By 2030, more than half of the world’s new job seekers will be African
Against these challenges, the meeting recommended that countries switch to a development model characterised by growth that will require less energy and resources, and would therefore have lower financing needs. “It is important that countries achieve growth that is not excessively polluting while allowing for the rise of resilient economies. It is also crucial that the transition to this new model be well managed, because it will have many implications for economic policies," explained Zoubir Benhamouche. Such a transition would be all the more complex since it would coincide with three watershed changes currently underway: the rise of artificial intelligence, which calls into question past development solutions; geopolitical and economic fragmentation; and climate change, he added.
The transition to a lower-carbon model would require an accelerated and directed structural change that would include drivers of change such as demand shifts, technological innovation, regulatory changes, policy coordination, the development of monitoring frameworks, financing changes and workforce transition, explained Giovanni Valensisi, who stressed the importance of targeting two key “pressure points”: energy and agriculture.
Transiting to a low-carbon economy would require a deep transformation, a process that could take decades. To achieve a successful outcome, countries would need a strategic plan not only to reduce emissions, but also to transform employment and value creation, he stressed. On a more positive level, Africa would have a comparative advantage compared to the rest of the world as the youth of the African population means that policymakers will have to focus on strengthening and improving existing education systems rather than retraining the workforce like in countries with older populations. Moreover, African policymakers would gain from focusing on the development of vocational training, which is less costly in terms of time and resources, rather than high-level training only. Countries could carry out such educational reforms in partnership with players such as their private sectors and diasporas.
Reforming global finance is necessary, but additional options are available
Beyond this complex transformation, policy makers will also have to contend with another issue: access to financing. Presently, Africa attracts less than five percent of global climate finance, while the cost of its adaptation to climate change is estimated at USD 30 to USD 50 billion per year over the next ten years, i.e. two to three percent of the continent’s GDP. Adding to this challenge is the fact that the global financial system remains skewed in favour of climate change mitigation rather than adaptation; and the weak existing alignment between climate finance and economic transformation policies.
The round table agreed on the need for countries to keep pushing for global finance reform, while seeking alternative financial resources, for example through their private sectors and diasporas, through the improved management of national budgets or the public market reform to encourage bidding companies to adopt more environmentally friendly approaches.
According to the World Bank report “Ctrl-Alt-Delete: A Green Reboot for Emerging Markets - Key Sectors for Post-COVID Sustainable Growth”,
investing USD 200 billion in seven specific sectors can allow for the creation of 4.2 million jobs, reduce CO2 emissions by 111 million tons, and create an additional 10 million jobs by 2050 through decarbonization and clean industries.
“We should use financing that best meets the needs of the countries. At the forefront of policies, we need to think how we can make green and resilient growth go forward. For example, how can we bring financing to SMEs, since these are the businesses with the highest potential to create jobs? Green growth and resilience should be at the forefront of policy makers’ priorities,”, said World Bank Regional Coordinator for climate change Syed Adeel Abbas.
The Economic Commission for Africa can provide concrete support to its member countries in all these areas: At the ECA, we focus our efforts on three fundamental areas, said Nassim Oulmane, an economist and head of Natural Resources, Green and Blue Economy at the ECA Climate Change, Food Security and Natural Resource Division (CFND) . “First, we are pushing for climate finance architecture reform both at the global level and in Africa, through the development of innovative financial instruments which are favorable to our countries such as debt-for-nature swaps; green, blue or sovereign bonds or regional bonds to help countries access capital without worsening their over-indebtedness”, he said, ”Second, we show that investing in green sectors can contribute to creating millions of jobs while developing resilient infrastructures much needed by our economies. Last but not least, we lay the political foundations for a just transition, with support for the development of the required frameworks for targeted reforms that can foster green investments and quality jobs”.
Click here to watch the full webinar:
https://youtu.be/WhPrySk3p6U
Media queries: Houda Filali-Ansary, Communications Officer, ECA Office for North Africa
E-mail: filali-ansary@un.org
Issued by:
Communications Section Economic Commission for Africa
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Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: eca-info@un.org