1. Global South Leadership and Multilateral Decision-Making
For Africa, the risk landscape of
geoengineering includes unintended climatic and ecological effects;
transboundary impacts and attribution challenges; termination shock and
technological lock-in; disruption of rainfall, agricultural and water systems;
risks to marine and terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity; unequal
distribution of benefits and harms; weak liability and compensation mechanisms;
diversion of climate finance from adaptation and locally led resilience;
speculative carbon-market incentives; and the possibility of unilateral or
poorly governed experimentation. These concerns call for stronger African
coordination across scientific, diplomatic and civil-society constituencies,
including through African Union processes and wider South–South collaboration.
2. The Geoengineering Outlook for Africa
For Africa, the geoengineering
debate cannot be separated from the changing political economy of climate
finance. Carbon dioxide removal and other technological approaches may attract
substantial public, philanthropic and private investment precisely because they
offer potentially scalable responses to difficult residual-emissions
challenges. Yet Africa enters this conversation with a significant structural
financing deficit: adaptation, locally led resilience, ecosystem restoration,
food-system transformation and energy access remain substantially
under-resourced. There is therefore a legitimate concern that technologically
sophisticated interventions could become more financially attractive than the
less visible but essential investments required to strengthen African
resilience. Africa should consequently advocate for additionality, transparency and public-interest safeguards in any
emerging geoengineering finance architecture. Yet, the financial question,
however, cannot be separated from the longer temporal dimension of
technological intervention, particularly the risks that may be transferred to
generations that did not make today's decisions. 3. Risks for African Youth
The prospect of termination shock illustrates why
technological risk must be evaluated over decades rather than political and
investment cycles. Where an intervention temporarily offsets aspects of warming
and is subsequently interrupted, climatic conditions could potentially change
rapidly, creating stresses for ecosystems and societies that have adapted to
the intervention. In Africa, where agricultural systems, water security,
coastal livelihoods and biodiversity are already highly sensitive to climatic variability,
such abrupt transitions could amplify existing vulnerabilities. The relevant
question is therefore not simply whether an intervention produces a near-term
climate benefit, but whether it creates dependencies whose failure could
generate disproportionate risks for countries with comparatively limited
adaptive capacity. This makes intergenerational justice particularly important
for African youth. Young Africans will inherit both the consequences of climate
change and the institutional commitments created by today's technological
decisions, including questions of reversibility, liability, monitoring and
long-term governance. This concern leads directly to the wider governance
question: what institutional arrangements can manage uncertainty while keeping
ambitious and equitable climate pathways open? 4.
Governance Risks and Higher Ambition
Geoengineering presents a
distinctive governance challenge because some interventions could affect
climatic systems beyond the jurisdiction of the actors initiating them. This
raises unresolved questions concerning authority, consent, accountability, liability
and the legitimacy of unilateral or small-group action. For Africa, these risks
are amplified by asymmetries in scientific infrastructure, finance and
diplomatic power. A governance system that permits technologically capable
actors to define acceptable risk for everyone else could reproduce, within
climate intervention, the same structural inequalities that have characterised
aspects of global environmental governance. Africa should therefore support higher ambition while preserving multilateral
optionality. The objective is not technological paralysis, but
disciplined choice under uncertainty. 5. Deep Climate Vision
Africa's engagement with
geoengineering should therefore be situated within a deeper climate vision—one that recognises climate change not
simply as a technical problem requiring technological correction, but as a
systemic challenge involving development pathways, ecological degradation,
inequality, energy systems and relationships between societies and nature. For
Africa, climate ambition must remain connected to food sovereignty, ecosystem
integrity, locally led adaptation, renewable energy access, resilient
livelihoods and the protection of communities whose economies and cultures are
closely embedded in land, forests, oceans and other ecosystems. Technology has
a place within this vision, but it should serve transformation rather than
become a substitute for it.
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