Dear G20 Leaders,
As the world’s most powerful economies gather for the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit on African soil, we, the undersigned organisations and movements from across the continent, write with urgency and clarity: Africa cannot survive the climate crisis under the weight of unsustainable debt. This summit must mark a turning point.
Africa is facing climate impacts it did not cause. Despite contributing just 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, African countries are experiencing some of the world’s most devastating consequences: prolonged droughts, destructive floods, cyclones, heatwaves, desertification, and rising food and energy insecurity.
These climate shocks repeatedly push our countries deeper into debt as governments are forced to borrow to rebuild, respond, and recover. The result? A vicious cycle of climate vulnerability and fiscal suffocation.
Loan-driven climate finance is failing Africa. The continent requires US$52.7–106 billion annually for climate adaptation, yet the funding available is grossly inadequate, inaccessible, and overwhelmingly offered as loans structured to profit lenders rather than protecting people.
Instead of strengthening resilience, climate finance is worsening the continent’s debt. Current climate finance flows leave a US$127.2 billion annual gap through 2030, compounding the unfulfilled promise by wealthy nations to mobilise US$100 billion per year.
This system entrenches a colonial dynamic where African nations pay the price, financially and physically, for a crisis they did not create.
A debt crisis is a climate crisis. When adaptation depends on loans, a single climate disaster can wipe out infrastructure and still leave countries paying the debt. This is not climate finance. It is climate injustice.
Communities cannot adapt under the weight of repayments. Governments cannot invest in resilience when budgets are drained by debt servicing. People cannot survive a crisis while carrying the burden of another.
As the G20 convenes in Africa, we call for decisive action rooted in justice, solidarity, and historical responsibility. We urge G20 leaders to commit to:
- Immediate and comprehensive debt relief for African countries: African governments need fiscal space to invest in climate resilience, social protection, and community-driven adaptation.
- A decisive shift to grants, not loans: Climate finance must stop exacerbating debt. Grants must become the primary channel for adaptation, resilience, loss and damage, and community-led climate action.
- A fully grant-based Loss and Damage facility: Loss and Damage finance cannot come in the form of loans to countries already suffering irreversible climate-related harm. This fund must be capitalised and accessible, urgently.
- A mandatory grant-to-loan ratio at Multilateral Development Banks: MDBs must commit to a minimum 50% grant ratio for all adaptation finance to climate-vulnerable nations.
- Grant-based support for a just energy transition: Communities and workers cannot carry the financial risks of the energy shift. Grants must support retraining, local grids, social protection, and community-owned renewable energy systems.
This G20 is a moment of truth. Hosting the G20 in Africa is not symbolic; it is a responsibility. It is a test of whether the world’s most powerful governments will meet the climate crisis and deliver justice or continue a system that punishes the most vulnerable.
The decisions made in Johannesburg will determine whether Africa has a fighting chance in responding to the climate crisis or whether the continent is pushed deeper into an impossible financial trap.
We call on G20 leaders to act with courage, justice, and urgency. Our demand is simple and morally undeniable: Climate justice for Africa must be debt-free.
For the sake of our people, our economies, and our shared future, the G20 must end the climate loan trap and commit to a fair, grant-based global finance system that prioritises protecting lives over profits.
Signed,
African Civil Society, Movements, and Partners within the 350Africa Network