Kim Harrisberg

From mangrove restoration along West Africa's coastline to organic waste recycling in Nairobi, billions of dollars have been spent to help Africa adapt to climate shocks like floods, droughts and heatwaves. 

This week, African leaders at the African Climate Summit in Ethiopia called for more international funding support for phase two of the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), which has supported these efforts since 2021. 

Be it AI pest detectors in Kenya or Nigerian soil-free farming, climate change is pushing farmers to innovate and show the sort of can-do spirit that experts say is vital if Africa is to overcome its twin scourge of high heat and hunger.

The experts - drawn from government, farming and the lab - are meeting in Senegal to brainstorm new ways to deal with old threats as farmers across whole swathes of Africa face famine, conflict, a debt crisis and ever-worsening climate shocks.

Since President Donald Trump gutted U.S. aid programmes this year, thousands of South African health workers, whose salaries were covered by U.S. funds, have not been able to monitor HIV patients and distribute medication.

South Africa has the world's highest burden of HIV, but has been praised for controlling the number of infections.

In South Africa's coal heartland, grey smog hangs over parts of the Mpumalanga province like a thick blanket, while miners descend underground to chip away at the black rock.

One of them is Mooi Masuku, an artisanal coal miner of 17 years, who says a new bill to legalise informal mining is key to protecting and creating jobs, particularly as critical minerals are eyed for green technologies.

Under U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, climate change regulation, research and funding have been slashed, including the cash meant to help developing countries like South Africa transition from coal to cleaner energy.

But while green goals may take longer to hit, the head of the just energy transition unit in South Africa's presidency - a body overseeing the shift to clean energy - said the country is "not backtracking on its climate commitments."

As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, roughly half of Africa - some 600 million people - is struggling to access reliable energy, making it the world's least electrified continent, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) think-tank said.

This number is still likely an underestimate because existing data is failing to account for everyone suffering from 'energy poverty' - a lack of stable and affordable access to electricity.

Sithandekile Nyathi confidently hoists herself into the compact loader, lowers the metal caging around the vehicle, and drives towards large mounds of wood timber chips.

The chips eventually go up a conveyer belt into a converter, where they are heated and turned into a type of 'biochar' called activated carbon - a charcoal that stores carbon and could help to cut planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions.

South African street vendor and widow Brenda Mtshali is furious that an automated message on her phone means she will have to skimp on food for her six children.

She is one of an estimated 10 million eligible South Africans excluded from welfare payments due to administrative obstacles, including problems with an algorithm-based income verification check, recent research has found.

A short walk from their university classes, four South African students traded textbooks for gumboots as they collected and analysed water samples from the Wilgespruit river in Johannesburg.

They are part of a growing movement of citizen scientists collecting water samples across the country to monitor pollution and brainstorm about what can be done about it.

At a tense meeting in Nigeria's capital Abuja, health workers poured over drug registers and testing records to gauge whether U.S. aid cuts would unravel years of painstaking work against tuberculosis in one of Africa's hardest hit countries.

For several days in May, they brainstormed ways to limit the fallout from a halt to U.S. funding for the TB Local Network (TB LON), which delivers screening, diagnosis and treatment.