Programme > International partnerships

Strengthening african agency in global climate, finance and trade governance

A transition shaped from within.

The vision

An Africa that shapes the global climate transition on its own terms; negotiating equitable bilateral partnerships, influencing multilateral rules and mobilising international investment in ways that reinforce domestic development and long-term sovereignty. In such a future, African priorities are not accommodated at the margins of global governance. They help define it.

The challenge

The global climate transition is not a neutral process. The terms agreed in international arenas will determine whether African economies capture opportunity or absorb risk.

Without coordination and strong analytical capacity, countries risk entering arrangements that constrain policy space, limit domestic value addition or transfer environmental and social costs onto vulnerable communities. These dynamics are not incidental to the climate transition. They are central to it.

The transition will be shaped from within or imposed from without. How Africa engages in multilateral forums, bilateral negotiations and regional coordination processes will determine whether the continent strengthens its sovereignty and domestic capability or absorbs risk in systems defined elsewhere.

Africa’s ability to shape the global transition requires negotiators equipped with rigorous technical analysis grounded in long-term development strategy. It requires the analytical and institutional foundations through which African countries can negotiate more equitable terms across energy, trade, industrial cooperation and climate finance. It requires credible, investable project pipelines that attract international capital on terms that build domestic capability. It requires regional coordination that aligns national positions and amplifies collective influence.

Our role

Africa’s climate and development future must be shaped from within, on its own terms and for its own people. That conviction is at the heart of everything the ACF does.

The ACF works to strengthen Africa’s capacity to engage global governance processes on its own terms; not as a passive recipient of frameworks designed elsewhere, but as a confident, well-resourced actor shaping the rules that govern the transition.

  • We enhance negotiation capacity and technical analysis in multilateral forums, ensuring that African positions are grounded in rigorous evidence and long-term development strategy.
  • We strengthen the analytical and institutional foundations through which African countries can negotiate more equitable terms with bilateral partners across energy, trade, industrial cooperation and climate finance.
  • We support the development of credible, investable project pipelines and investor-ready frameworks that attract international capital on terms that build domestic capability and strengthen sovereignty.
  • We advocate for more equitable multilateral rules across climate finance, carbon border measures, technology standards and concessional finance instruments ensuring that global frameworks reflect African development realities and transition timelines rather than the interests of those who have contributed most to the crisis.

Our impact: Green industrialisation development expert panel (GIDEP)

Established by the ACF and the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, GIDEP brings together leading African thinkers on green industrialisation alongside experts from the broader Global South in a sustained process of collective knowledge-building. GIDEP is more than a research network. The analysis it generates moves from expert panels into policy briefs, from policy briefs into negotiating rooms and from negotiating rooms into the decisions that will define Africa’s industrial future. The network itself becomes an advocacy infrastructure, one where shared knowledge evolves into shared position and where shared position becomes collective power.