When COP31 opens in Antalya, Türkiye, this November, you’ll recognize the choreography immediately. I saw it all play out at COP29 in Baku: African ministers arrive with speeches about ambition, negotiators disappear into rooms with marked-up drafts, banners line the walkways outside, and climate slogans sound urgent. Ten days later, the summit ends and the final communiqué again calls for solidarity and a renewed pledge to keep 1.5°C alive.
Familiarity can’t mean resignation. For Africa and the wider Global South, COP31 is not another stop on the climate calendar. It’s a test of whether the multilateral system can move from language to delivery. If we show up to negotiate as we have before, we’ll leave with promises. If we show up to bargain, we may leave with power.
1. Turn pledges into plumbing
In Baku, I watched finance pledges get announced to applause, then watched them stall in the machinery of accreditation and disbursement. Climate finance has never lacked for press releases. What it lacks is money that actually lands where the floods hit. Africa’s demand in Türkiye should be simple: fix the pipes.
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First, capitalize the Loss and Damage Fund and the New Collective Quantified Goal with grants and concessional capital, not loans. A continent losing 5–15% of its GDP to climate shocks cannot borrow its way to resilience. Without grants, we sink deeper into an economic quagmire.
Second, open direct access for African institutions. The bottlenecks at the Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund have locked out the national and regional bodies that actually know the ground. Türkiye should host the launch of a fast-track pathway for African climate funds and banks.
Third, insist on transparency from pledge to disbursement to impact. What gets measured gets moved. Success would mean at least $50 billion committed to loss and damage and adaptation by 2028, with half delivered as grants. Anything less repeats the cycle I saw in Baku.
2. Make adaptation bankable
Mitigation gets the headlines. Adaptation keeps people alive. Africa puts less than 4% of carbon into the atmosphere, yet it pays the first and heaviest price when the rains fail or the rivers burst their banks. From Nigeria to Kenya, South Africa to Egypt, adaptation still receives less than a quarter of climate finance.
In Türkiye, the UNFCCC process must help us reframe adaptation as infrastructure, not charity. That means blending public and private capital for early warning systems, climate-smart agriculture, and resilient cities. It means debt-for-adaptation swaps that create fiscal space without stigma. And it means adopting a Global South Adaptation Index to measure progress and hold partners accountable.
Africa should not leave Antalya without a decision that puts adaptation finance on track to reach parity with mitigation by 2030. The promise was made in Glasgow. The time for delivery is now.
3. Protect the space to develop
The energy transition cannot be one-size-fits-all. I’ve reported from communities across West Africa where the grid is absent, and I’ve seen what happens when the only option is an expensive diesel generator. Africa holds 40% of the world’s solar potential and the minerals needed for batteries, yet 600 million people still live without electricity. Carbon border taxes, abrupt gas restrictions, and ESG-driven capital flight risk locking us into low energy access.
At COP31, the Global South should push for binding commitments on technology transfer, including licensing and joint ventures. We should secure recognition of gas as a transition fuel where it replaces coal and expands access. And we should demand reform of carbon markets so Article 6 delivers real finance to African projects, not just accounting entries for Northern emitters.
4. Lead with a unified voice
Africa’s moral authority on climate is high. Its negotiating cohesion is not. COP31 is an opportunity to move from fragmented positions to a bloc with a clear offer: we will leapfrog to clean energy and protect our forests, if the terms of trade, finance, and technology are fair.
Türkiye is a fitting host. It sits at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and it knows what it means to carry the burden of neighbors’ crises. A joint statement from Türkiye, Africa, and the wider Global South could reframe the summit from North-South confrontation to South-South leadership with Northern partnership.
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What success looks like
If COP31 ends with three outcomes, the Global South will have won: a capitalized, grant-based Loss and Damage Fund with disbursement starting in 2026; a clear path to parity between adaptation and mitigation finance by 2030; and a just transition framework that preserves space for energy access and industrialization.
Antalya won’t end the climate crisis. But it can decide whether the next phase of it is fair or not. The task for Africa is to turn moral clarity into negotiating leverage, and to insist that progress is measured not in degrees avoided, but in schools that stay open during floods, hospitals that stay powered through droughts, and young people employed in the industries of the next economy.
That is what we should canvass. That is what we should expect. And that is what COP31 must deliver.
*Aliu Akoshile is a climate-conflict researcher and editor-in-chief of NatureNews.Africa