By Elijah Bakari,
Building Africa’s Leadership in CDR & SRM
Across 2024 and 2025, Emerging Climate Frontiers (ECF) led one of the most ambitious and transformative efforts to advance African leadership in frontier climate technologies. Through a coordinated series of short courses delivered across Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, ECF provided training to more than 570 students, researchers, civil society actors, and early-career professionals in Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and Solar Radiation MSiisi Ansahanagement (SRM).
What began in 2024 as a bold step to expand Africa’s voice in a rapidly evolving scientific field grew in 2025 into a continental movement grounded in justice, sovereignty, and the conviction that African institutions should shape the future of climate interventions rather than simply adapt to decisions made elsewhere.
This two-year trajectory marks a meaningful shift. Africa is emerging not as a peripheral observer in climate intervention debates, but as a principal architect of how these technologies are defined, governed, and applied to safeguard vulnerable communities, ecosystems, and future generations.
2024: The Foundation, A New Continental Momentum Begins
The programme’s first year laid the groundwork for a new era of climate intervention literacy on the continent. Delivered across universities in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, the 2024 cycle introduced emerging researchers and students to the scientific, ethical, and governance dimensions of CDR and SRM.
In packed lecture halls from Accra to Nairobi to Durban, the appetite for this knowledge was unmistakable. Participants engaged with the science of atmospheric dynamics, carbon removal pathways, and solar radiation modification. They examined the justice implications of who holds the power over global temperature decisions, interrogated the political economy shaping emerging technologies, and asked critical questions about how Africa can safeguard its interests in a field long dominated by the Global North.
For many, this was their first formal exposure to climate interventions and the level of interest exceeded all expectations. The 2024 programme trained more than 200 participants, created the first cohort of African climate interventionists, and sparked conversations that would continue to expand into the year that followed.
A participant from Ghana captured the sentiment best:
“This course opened my eyes to the potential of CDR and SRM… I am now motivated to pursue further research in this field.”
Across campuses, the message was clear: Africa was ready for more.
2025: The Expansion — Deepening Africa’s Scientific Agency
If 2024 was about opening doors, 2025 was about stepping fully into the room.
ECF expanded its footprint across six universities in Ghana and Kenya, transforming the programme into one of the continent’s most extensive climate intervention capacity-building efforts. More than 350 participants engaged in deeper analyses of climate modelling, aerosol science, political economy, ethical frameworks, and governance pathways. Interest soared, attendance exceeded expectations, and new interdisciplinary networks began to take shape.
In Ghana, institutions such as KNUST, UCC, UENR, and the University of Ghana became hubs of intellectual debate. Students confronted the limits of current climate models, unpacked Africa’s restricted carbon budget, and explored the tension between technological feasibility and geopolitical risk.
At the University of Ghana, Dr. Boafo framed the moment with striking clarity: “We cannot run away from climate interventions. Africa must prepare research-wise, capacity-wise, and advocacy-wise.”
In Kenya, conversations blended science with praxis. From marine-based CDR opportunities in Mombasa to policy gaps in Nairobi, participants highlighted the urgency of stronger research funding, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and community engagement as non-negotiables in climate governance.
The 2025 programme affirmed a critical truth: when African students and scholars are given access to cutting-edge knowledge, they not only absorb it, they transform it, contextualize it, and strengthen it with lived realities that global discourse often overlooks.
A Continental Reflection — Confronting Inequities, Building Possibility
Across both years, recurring themes and structural gaps emerged. Universities highlighted limited access to high-resolution climate models, uneven research funding, and persistent underrepresentation of African scholars in global assessments that shape climate policy. Participants repeatedly emphasized fears of global north dominance over SRM governance, the ethical burden of transboundary risks, and the need for Africa-led evidence systems.
These reflections were not complaints, they were calls for transformation.
Because alongside these challenges was a powerful sense of possibility:
- African researchers forging new collaborations.
- Institutions expressing interest in annual CDR/SRM offerings.
- Growing youth-led networks mobilizing around climate governance.
- Rising demand for African perspectives in global conversations.
The two-year programme was not merely academic, it was political, ethical, and imaginative. It cultivated not just knowledge, but agency. Not just skills, but sovereignty.
What This Journey Means for ECF
For Emerging Climate Frontiers, the 2024–2025 cycle reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to African-led climate futures. It demonstrated that when African institutions are equipped with credible science, interdisciplinary tools, and justice-centred frameworks, they produce climate thinkers who challenge the status quo and redefine it.
This programme has made one principle unmistakable: equitable governance of climate intervention begins with equitable access to knowledge. It has also shown that when African youth are given the platform, they respond with clarity, courage, and conviction, setting a new standard for what leadership in this field can look like.
The Path Ahead, Africa Is Writing Its Own Climate Future
As we look beyond 2025, one truth becomes clear:
“The future of CDR and SRM governance cannot be shaped by a handful of nations. It will be shaped by the insight, experience, research, and leadership emerging from the Global South and from African youth who refuse to be written out of this story.”
Across these two years, ECF has ignited a continental dialogue, nurtured scientific curiosity, and reinforced the foundations of Africa’s climate innovation ecosystem. Yet this work represents a starting point rather than an endpoint..
Africa is not seeking permission to participate in the future of climate interventions. Africa is stepping forward, informed, equipped, and firmly prepared to lead. Through programmes such as this, the continent is already shaping the trajectory of that future.
