Why gender-responsive action must anchor Africa’s Climate Summit 2025

Panelists lead by Kenya’s President William Ruto (C) conduct a session during the Africa Climate Summit 2023 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) in Nairobi on September 5, 2023. (Photo by Luis Tato / AFP)

As Africa prepares to convene in Addis Ababa for the second Africa
Climate Summit (ACS) in September 2025, the continent stands at a critical intersection.

The dual threats of climate change
and socio-economic fragility continue to deepen inequalities, exacerbate
conflict, and undermine food security. Yet, the summit also presents an
opportunity: to reimagine climate action that is just, inclusive, and gender
responsive.

Climate change is no longer a distant threat, it is a present crisis.
With Africa warming faster than the global average and facing intensifying
droughts, floods, and biodiversity loss, Climate impacts threaten decades of
development gains.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that climate
change could cost African economies up to 15% of GDP by 2030 if no urgent
action is taken. But what often goes unnoticed is the economic toll of
failing to integrate gender into climate strategies: a gap that is both costly
and counterproductive. For climate action to be truly effective, it must
reflect the realities and contributions of all people: across genders,
generations, and geographies.

Women, girls, men, boys, and gender-diverse groups experience climate
impacts differently. Yet women and marginalised gender groups, especially those
from marginalised communities like those in the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL),
often carry the heaviest burdens due to pre-existing inequalities.

At the same
time, they remain largely invisible in decision-making spaces and are often viewed
as beneficiaries and rarely as agents of change that they are. This has a major
impact on the economy of African countries that are already struggling.

According
to McKinsey Global Institute, advancing gender equality in Africa could
add $316 billion to $550 billion annually by 2026, equivalent to 10–13% of
the continent’s collective GDP. Gender-blind climate policies risk leaving this
potential untapped. The upcoming summit offers a crucial chance to correct this imbalance
and guide states to tap into the potential for effective climate action.

Gender-responsive climate action is not just about inclusion, it is
about transforming systems of power. Across Africa, women and youth are
frontline defenders of nature, food producers, caregivers, and peacebuilders.
Their knowledge and agency are vital to building climate-resilient communities.
UNDP research shows that climate interventions that exclude women are
15–20% less effective and less sustainable.

Findings from an IDRC-supported study on the Endorois and Ilchamus
communities in Kenya show that women play critical, though often overlooked,
roles in peacebuilding amid climate-induced conflict. Their contributions,
ranging from faith-based mediation to youth mentorship, demonstrate that women
are not mere victims of climate crises: they are solution-makers.

However, they
are still struggling with systemic barriers that limit their effective
participation. Their exclusion from formal climate security processes not only
undermines local stability but also increases the costs of post-conflict
humanitarian response and reconstruction.

A truly gender-responsive approach requires intentional strategies,
including gender-disaggregated data, dedicated resources, and meaningful representation
in climate governance at all levels. This approach will expose the cost of
climate inaction and gender inequity through true cost accounting by integrating social,
environmental, and economic impacts into decision-making.

This approach
indicates that ignoring women’s unpaid care work and community leadership leads
to undervalued national accounts; investing in women’s access to agroecology,
renewable energy, and peacebuilding yields higher social returns per dollar;
and the “externalities” of gender exclusion, like increased GBV, displacement,
and poor health, create hidden economic burdens for governments and donors
alike. With this, gender-responsive climate investments are not just moral
decisions, they are fiscally responsible ones.

Africa’s just transition and climate ambition must therefore mirror
equality and not historical injustices. Just transition should prioritise those
most affected by climate change, many of whom are women and girls, ensuring
access to clean energy, jobs, land, food security, education, and climate
finance if the continent is to achieve effective climate action.

At the inaugural ACS that was held in Nairobi in 2023, African First
Ladies emphasised women’s roles in this transition. However, their
recommendations failed to make it into the final Nairobi Declaration, which
only briefly mentioned women. The 2025 summit must do better by moving beyond
rhetoric to integrate the disadvantaged gender groups, like women and youth, as
leaders, not just beneficiaries.

This requires policy tools like gender-responsive budgeting,
project-level gender audits, and participatory frameworks that recognise
women’s leadership in just transition, climate adaptation, and sustainable
agriculture.

Speaking on sustainable agriculture, Africa’s food systems are in
crisis, and gender and climate change are at the heart of it. Women produce
over 60% of food on the continent, yet they receive less than 10% of
agricultural credit, own just 13% of land, and face restricted access to
markets and extension services. Climate shocks only deepen these gaps. The
World Bank estimates that in agriculture, equal access to land, credit, and
inputs could increase women’s yields by 20–30%, potentially lifting up to
150 million people out of hunger globally.

Building food systems that are resilient, inclusive, and equitable means
investing in gender-responsive research, agroecology, and support systems that
empower women as farmers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers. It also means
dismantling harmful gender norms that hinder women’s full participation in the
food economy. These actions boost productivity, resilience, and community
nutrition hence not just good development practice but a smart economic
strategy.

Beyond the food and nutrition insecurity crisis, climate-induced
conflict is increasing across Africa, especially in resource-scarce regions.
Droughts, migration, and competition for land and water fuel tensions that
often escalate into violence. Women, girls, boys, persons with disability, and the
elderly suffer disproportionately from the resulting insecurity, displacement,
and gender-based violence.

Yet, as shown in the peacebuilding processes among Kenya’s Ilchamus and
Endorois communities, women are also key to restoring peace and resilience. This
is corroborated by a global study on the
implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 that
reveals that women’s participation increases the probability of a peace
agreement lasting at least two years by 20 per cent, and by 35 per cent the
probability of a peace agreement lasting 15 years. Investing in inclusive
conflict-sensitive climate programming, therefore, reduces the need for reactive
emergency spending and fosters long-term resilience.

The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) framework
must be integrated into climate action plans, recognising women’s agency and
supporting their roles in community-led conflict resolution.

Conflict-sensitive climate programming must include women not as passive
recipients, but as peacebuilders and negotiators. This means funding and
formalising women-led early warning systems, cross-border peace dialogues, and
land tenure reforms.

Achieving all these will not be possible without gender responsive
climate finance, which has remained severely limited despite global commitments
like COPs and regional commitments like the Nairobi ACS declaration. Less than 3% of
climate finance globally supports projects with gender equality as a primary
objective. Most funding mechanisms still lack clear gender targets,
disaggregated reporting, or safeguards against reinforcing inequalities.

The Addis Ababa summit should champion gender-tagged climate
investments, establish funding windows for women-led, youth-led, and PWD-led
initiatives. The funding windows should require gender integration in all
financing frameworks, and support institutions to adopt true cost account
frameworks and track social benefits.

The funding should promote transparency
and accountability in finance flows that link outcomes to gender equity and
climate resilience. Africa can lead by example: showing the world that climate
finance without gender responsiveness is both ineffective and unjust.

A Call to Action

As we build a Green Africa, the path forward must include everyone. A
gender-transformative approach to climate action is not just the right thing to
do, it is the most economically sensible path. Africa Climate Summit 2025 must be a turning point.

Building on the
gaps of ACS 2023, this year’s summit should adopt a gender-transformative
agenda that: explicitly integrates gender equality into the summit declaration
and outcomes; ensures women’s leadership in negotiations, panels, and policy
design; commits to gender-responsive finance, food systems, and just transition
frameworks; and promotes conflict sensitive climate action, and peacebuilding
strategies rooted in women’s lived experiences and Indigenous knowledge.

Climate action that
ignores gender responsiveness is incomplete and ineffective: it’s not just a
moral failure but an economic miscalculation. Economic justice,
climate justice, and gender justice are not separate struggles: they are one
and the same. As Africa rises
to meet the climate challenge, it must do so with all voices at the table.

Salome Owuonda is the Executive Director, Africa Centre for Sustainable and Inclusive Development (Africa CSID).

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