Africa People’s Climate Assembly

Date: 3rd – 6th September 2023

Location: Nairobi, Kenya.

The context in which the Africa People’s Climate Assembly will be taking place

The climate crisis is being turbocharged across the globe with the African people disproportionately experiencing the devastating impacts. Poverty and hunger are on the rise and millions of Africans are being forced to escape and migrate from their countries due to climate change. Midway through the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and 10 years since the launch of Africa’s development blueprint – Agenda 2063, 600 million Africans without access to energy while over 900 million Africans cannot cook without harmful fumes. Public services such as education and healthcare are chronically underfunded as unsustainable debt drives austerity. Climate induced disasters are increasing both the cost of borrowing and exacerbating the risk of debt crises as most countries have no option other than borrowing to deal with the recovery and reconstruction costs whenever disasters hit. Unsustainable debt levels that many countries face today also mean less fiscal space and to invest in adaptation and mitigation as well as address losses and damages already being experienced.

With the climate and development crises being supercharged by the very institutions and structures that created it, private sector centered, government bureaucrats led, and international financial institutions’ responses and policy recommendations as they stand today will not change the course for millions of Africans living in poverty. The same policies being proposed today and advanced in the Africa Climate Summit will continue to pillage African resources while concentrating power and wealth in the hands of the rich few. In this context, people powered organizing and people centered policy response is more urgent than ever to advance alternatives to the current climate and development trajectory.

About the Africa People’s Climate Assembly

The African Peoples Climate Assembly will bring together diverse stakeholders from across struggles and movements from across the African continent, under the Africa Movements Building Space, for a renewed African vision for prosperity and well-being for all that optimises the continent’s abundant human and natural resources and puts African people in the driving seat of the climate and development action agenda. It is an opportunity to centre people’s voices, needs, wellbeing and the earth’s welfare in the climate change action and development discourse.

The Assembly seeks to organize across struggles and movements and push for structural change and sustainable financing, promoting effective climate action and development pathways that enhance livelihoods, secures food sovereignty, energy sovereignty, protects African people’s dignity, natural heritage and culture, and helps Africa to end the structural developmental traps that it has faced for centuries.

The Africa People’s Climate Assembly will be different. It will serve as an inclusive platform for civil society organizations, grassroots movements, indigenous communities, faith leaders, artists, youth activists, academics, think tanks and other stakeholders to collaborate, share knowledge, and propose actionable transformational solutions needed for a climate compatible development in Africa. The agenda will be fluid but structured around transformative solutions to the structural challenges and traps Africa has experienced over decades and centuries. The focus will be on the African people’s agency and the vast possibilities at hand to achieve an inclusive and prosperous Africa. It will seek to reinforce and urge for a more unified African voice on climate discourse and ways through which Africa Climate Justice movement can meaningfully connect across struggles, movements, and with progressive global voices to achieve greater solidarity and deliver systemic change.

Key Summit objectives

The Africa People’s Climate Assemby will seek to achieve the following objectives:

1. Provide an engaging alternative platform for marginalized and underrepresented groups including farmers, indigenous peoples, faith actors, artists, academics, scientists, civil society, women and youth to voice their climate and development concerns, perspectives and solutions.
2. Recognize and celebrate the inspiring efforts and achievements of individuals, communities, organizations, and governments in implementing climate solutions that centers peoples and communities’ wellbeing and culture.
3. Create awareness about the urgency of climate action and the disproportionate impacts that private sector and Global North driven solutions have on vulnerable communities in Africa.
4. Expose the fallacy of private sector led, Global North driven climate solutions and the hypocrisy of entities that instead of financing renewable energy continue to finance the fossil fuel industry and export oriented industrial agriculture at the expense of own stated corporate climate targets and commitments. 
5. Advocate for climate justice, emphasizing the importance of equity, human rights, women’s rights, and fair distribution of climate benefits and burdens, especially for those least responsible for causing climate change.
6. Advocate for plausible alternative pathways for Africa towards financing climate adaptation, including investing in clean energy and food production systems that enhance rather than weaken food and energy sovereignty.
7. Call for debt cancellation for the most climate-vulnerable countries and bold national and global action on tax reforms to provide sustainable finance for climate action across Africa.
8. Facilitate cross-movement learning, knowledge sharing and collaboration towards transformative climate action and development policies that address the structural traps and challenges that Africa has experienced over centuries.
9. Consolidate African people’s demands towards SDGs Summit, UNSG’s Climate Summit, UN General Assembly and COP28.

Key themes:

The Africa People’s Climate Assembly will revolve around the following themes:

• Climate Finance, Climate Reparations, debt and the global financial architecture – moving from climate finance in the form of loans to action on debt cancellation, and tax justice.  This will also include actualization of loss and damage compensation in line with COP 27 outcomes.
• Food sovereignty, sustainable agriculture, and land use – challenging export oriented industrial agriculture and supporting African solutions based on agro-ecology.  
• African minerals and the Energy Transition agenda – developing a Pan-African industrial policy to leverage Africa’s natural resources and human capabilities for high value-added industrial development that serves the needs of African economies.
• Africa’s Energy Transition/Renewable Energy Agenda– the risks of stranded assets/fossil-fuel infrastructure and the potential of sustainable alternatives in Africa.
• Biodiversity protection and ecosystem restoration 
• Human rights, women’s rights, and protection of climate justice defenders as well as protection, compensation for victims of climate-induced disasters. This includes the disproportionately higher care burden women consequently carry to sustain families because of the climate crisis.

Methodology for delivering the Africa People’s Climate Assembly.

We hope to make the Africa People’s Climate Assembly fun and engaging, and a space where the political meets the practical, and artistry meets activism. The Assembly will therefore be delivered in a creative and innovative way with a mix of plenary sessions, panel discussions, cultural exchanges, art exhibitions and music. Participants will be provided with an interactive space for networking and strategizing for future collaboration. The Assembly will preferably be organized in an open space.  The participating members/agencies will self-propose activities they will deliver so that the steering committee can advise how best to keep this coordinated and avoid overlaps.

Types of Actions that will take place during the People’s Assembly

• The People’s Assembly

The Assembly will take place both physically and virtually to enable wider engagement and participation from across Africa and beyond. Africans from across all regions, sectors, struggles and movements will come together to share their experiences of climate change and proffer people centered solutions to the intersecting climate crisis ranging from fisherfolks and farmers perspective, through hunters and gathers to mining affected communities. The Assembly will be a dynamic and inclusive space for people to raise their voices and share their experience and offer people centered solutions. .

• National, Regional and Global Media work – feature pieces, debates, etc

The Africa People’s Climate Assembly is going to invest heavily in media and communications to disrupt the mainstream narrative and discourse being advanced at the Africa Climate Summit, there is need to engage national, regional and global media in loud and proposition manner.

• People’s Court

The People’s court will hold public hearings where selected individuals from climate vulnerable communities and those impacted by the extraction of critical minerals will get to share their testimonies on the impacts of climate induced disasters and extraction of critical minerals has had on their lives and their communities. Activists should explain the big picture, present evidence, bring witnesses, allow victims to show their cases, and invite specialists to show the impacts on people’s lives. The people’s court will present a verdict based on restorative measures to present to the heads of state.  The people’s court will be open to the public and to the media for wider dissemination and awareness.

• Wall of Hope

The Africa People’s Climate Assembly will not be one where people are spectators but one where African people collectively participate in providing solutions to the greatest challenge of our time – climate change through painting, collective letters, culture, poem, murals, and people’s life stories among others.

• The Africa People’s Climate March

The People’s march will be held on 4th September to draw the attention of the Summit conveners to people’s demands and the urgent need address Africa’s climate, energy and development challenge under the equity principles that underpin the climate discourse.

• Evening/Night Vigil

An evening vigil will be held at the Freedom Corner to commemorate the lives lost through climate induced disasters and climate activists who have lost their lives as result of their commitment to fighting for climate justice. The vigil will also serve as a stark reminder of the urgent need to prioritize climate action.

• Side events

The Africa People’s Climate Assembly has been designed in way that it will provide space for specific organizations, constituencies, communities and networks to host thematic specific conversations and side events.

Expected outcomes

1. A comprehensive declaration reflecting the voices and aspirations of the African people, outlining key recommendations for a climate justice and a climate compatible development vision for Africa. This declaration will be handed over to the Presidents of Kenya and Comoros in their capacities as Chair of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC) and the African Union respectively. The same declaration will be handed over to the UNSG and COP 28 Presidency.
2. Enhanced collaboration and partnerships among civil society organizations, grassroots movements, farmer organization, artists, indigenous communities, faith actors, and climate activists among others across the continent.
3. Shared voice and narrative that speaks to the African reality that is built across movements and struggles.
4. Commitment to continue working together as an African Movement of Movements across constituencies leading up to the COP 28.

Delivery of the Africa People’s Climate Assembly

The Africa People’s Climate Assembly will be organized under the Africa Movements Building Space, by a coalition of civil society organizations, grassroots movements, artists, and individuals committed to climate justice and a new climate and development vision for Africa. A small steering group will be constituted to oversee the overall delivery of the Africa People’s Climate Assembly.

The African People’s Climate Assembly aims to be a catalyst for positive change, uniting diverse voices and struggles and igniting a collective commitment to a new climate and development vision for Africa. The People’s Climate Assembly aims to inspire transformative solutions for a climate compatible development in Africa – one that puts the needs and aspirations of poor people and communities at the center. Through the media and other virtual platforms, the wider African climate and social justice movements will be encouraged to participate in their respective capitals and locations throughout the continent.