Rethinking Climate Adaptation in Africa

Webinar overview

Across Africa, climate change is no longer a future risk but a lived reality. From advancing desertification and climate-related conflict dynamics in the Sahel to intensified flooding in coastal and informal settlements in Sierra Leone, climate impacts are reshaping livelihoods, deepening vulnerability, and testing governance systems.

In response, global investments in climate adaptation have increased significantly. Yet many interventions continue to fall short of expected outcomes, particularly for the most vulnerable communities. A growing body of evidence suggests that this gap is not merely technical, but structural: adaptation strategies are frequently externally designed, standardized across diverse contexts, and insufficiently grounded in local realities and Indigenous knowledge systems.

Emerging findings from a climate-conflict-livelihoods synthesis in the Sahel show that adaptation efforts that overlook social dynamics, political context, and community-level coping strategies risk reinforcing vulnerability rather than reducing it. At the same time, climate misinformation and disinformation increasingly shape how climate risks and responses are understood—undermining trust and delaying effective policy action.

Despite these constraints, communities are actively responding. In Sierra Leone, particularly in high-risk coastal and urban communities such as Kroo Bay, Portee, and Rokupa, residents are implementing locally driven adaptation measures to manage recurrent flooding and climate stress. Often characterized as a “no-wait-for-government” approach, these initiatives are practical, low-cost, and deeply rooted in lived experience—yet they remain largely under-recognized and underfunded within national and international adaptation frameworks.