Building the case for climate finance: Lessons from the AGNES Africa capacity-building programme
In February 2026, AGNES Africa trained 30 practitioners across Africa to build strong climate finance proposals by improving climate rationale skills, addressing low funding access caused by limited technical capacity.
- Africa
- capacity building
- climate adaptation
- climate policy
Building the case for climate finance: Lessons from the AGNES Africa capacity-building programme
In February 2026, AGNES Africa trained 30 practitioners across Africa to build strong climate finance proposals by improving climate rationale skills, addressing low funding access caused by limited technical capacity.
Africa is at the sharp end of the climate crisis. Droughts, floods, rising seas, and shifting rainfall patterns are already reshaping livelihoods, food systems, and infrastructure across the continent. Yet despite facing some of the world's most severe and compounding climate risks, Africa receives a fraction of the global climate finance that is urgently needed to respond.
3–4% : Share of global climate finance that reaches Africa despite the continent bearing some of the highest climate vulnerability in the world.
Changing this requires more than political will and funding pledges. It requires African institutions to develop the technical capacity to design compelling, evidence-based climate proposals that can compete for and unlock the resources available through funds such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Adaptation Fund.
This is exactly what Unit 3 of the AGNES Africa Climate Finance and Innovative Business Models capacity-building programme set out to address. Facilitated in February 2026, this session brought together 30 participants from across Africa representing government, the private sector, civil society, and academia to build one of the most foundational and often overlooked skills in climate finance: developing a strong climate rationale.