Press Release: For Immediate Release
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 8th September 2026
Ahead of COP 31 & 32, faith leaders, faith-based organisations, civil society and climate actors from across Africa and beyond have come together to launch Africa Can’t Wait: Interfaith Voices for Just Climate Action, a global interfaith climate campaign calling for urgent, just and rights-centred implementation of existing climate commitments.
Launched in Addis Ababa alongside the Fourteenth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-XIV), the campaign brings together faith communities and partners around a shared call to move from climate commitments to equitable, locally led, rights-centred and inclusive implementation.
Africa stands at the centre of both climate vulnerability and opportunity. Across the continent, faith actors and communities are already delivering climate action through locally led adaptation, resilience, renewable energy and clean cooking, restoration and nature-based solutions, while advocating for greater access to climate finance.
Yet communities continue to experience the consequences of climate change, including drought, floods, food insecurity, displacement and loss and damage. Africa Can’t Wait seeks to close the gap between global climate commitments and the action reaching communities, bringing the voices, experience and solutions of African communities into national, regional and global climate discussions.
The campaign will mobilise action across four Action Tracks:
- Climate Finance: Advocating for climate finance that reaches local communities and supports locally led climate action.
- Adaptation, Resilience and Loss and Damage: Advancing equitable approaches that respond to the realities and needs of communities on the frontlines of climate change.
- Renewable Energy and Clean Cooking: Promoting equitable access to clean energy and solutions that respond to Africa’s energy and development needs.
- Restoration and Nature-Based Solutions: Showcasing and advocating for rights-centred restoration and nature-based solutions rooted in local and indigenous knowledge.
The campaign will place particular emphasis on showcasing what faith actors are already doing on the ground, using evidence, stories and community experience to strengthen climate advocacy. Through its partners, the campaign will document and amplify faith-led climate action across Africa, connecting implementation realities with the policy decisions that shape climate finance, adaptation, energy and nature.
At the heart of the campaign is a mobilisation to raise one million signatures in support of just and rights-centred implementation of climate action. The signature campaign will provide a concrete measure of public support and bring together faith communities, youth, women, civil society, communities and other constituencies behind a common call for action ahead of COP32.
“Faith networks across Africa have not been waiting for climate commitments to become action. Through grants, partnerships and locally designed programmes, they have been supporting communities to adapt, build resilience and implement practical climate solutions shaped by their own priorities and realities. This gives us something powerful to bring to the global climate conversation: evidence of what just implementation can look like in practice when communities are at the centre of designing and delivering solutions. For too long, much of this work has happened within individual faith networks, often without the opportunity to be seen collectively or connected to the wider climate policy debate. Africa Can’t Wait changes that. By bringing interfaith partners together, we can showcase the breadth of climate action already being delivered by faith actors, learn from one another, and demonstrate to policymakers and other partners not only what is possible, but how climate action can be designed and implemented in ways that are locally owned, equitable and rooted in the needs of communities. Our ambition is to turn the experience of faith actors across Africa into collective evidence for what just implementation looks like, and to use that evidence to demand that climate commitments are finally delivered at the scale and urgency that Africa requires.”
“Many of the solutions to Africa’s urgent climate crisis lie with African communities themselves. Faith communities, civil society and community actors all over Africa are already delivering on locally led adaptation, resilience and climate action. They demand urgent action to finance African solutions, no longer accepting empty promises or delays in implementing life saving commitments. Through the Africa Can’t Wait campaign, NCA and partners will pave the way for African faith leaders, youth and communities to effectively demand justice, showcase their solutions and influence global climate politics.”
“Africa cannot keep paying the price for commitments that remain on paper. For us as people of faith, climate action is not only about targets or negotiations. It is about protecting life, defending human dignity and caring for our common home. Across Africa, communities are already showing us what action looks like, from advocating for renewable energy to protecting land, water and livelihoods. What they need now is for leaders to match that courage with implementation. Africa Can’t Wait is an opportunity for faith communities to come together, raise our collective voice and make clear that climate justice must reach the people who are living with the consequences of this crisis every day.”
“This is a critical campaign for faith actors in Africa. Indeed, we have had several pledges from developed countries with little or no movement in terms of implementation. Faith actors are the first responders in cases of disasters emanating from climate change. By the way, the Africa Faith Actors Network for Climate Justice (AFAN-CJ) regards matters of climate change as matters of life and death. We therefore call for urgency in addressing them. We need to go beyond mere talk and pledges. Our people are dying daily because of droughts, floods, landslides and other disasters. Thus, we welcome this campaign that will mobilize faith actors to apply more pressure on those responsible to help the situation.”
“Africa cannot keep being invited to the table only to explain the damage climate change is doing to our people. We must be at the table to shape the decisions, the finance and the solutions. Africa Can’t Wait is therefore more than a campaign slogan; it is a call from our communities and our faith traditions to move from promises to just implementation. Across our continent, people of faith are already organising, protecting land and livelihoods, standing with communities facing extraction, and advancing clean and locally owned energy. Through this interfaith campaign, we are bringing those voices together, not to speak for communities, but to make sure their lived realities, wisdom and solutions are heard where decisions are made. From climate finance and adaptation to renewable energy, clean cooking, restoration and loss and damage, we are saying clearly: Africa needs climate action that reaches people, respects dignity, strengthens local leadership and leaves no community behind. For GreenFaith Africa, this is the spirit of our grassroots work: faith must not remain silent when people and the Earth are harmed. Our faith calls us to stand together, speak truth to power and build a future in which African communities are not treated as spectators of the climate crisis, but as leaders of the just solutions.”
The campaign recognises that faith actors are not simply audiences for climate action, but leaders, implementers, advocates and trusted community partners with the reach and credibility to connect global climate discourse with the realities of people and communities.
For faith communities, this leadership is also rooted in a moral responsibility to care for creation and stand with communities most affected by the climate crisis. The campaign will create opportunities for faith actors to connect this responsibility with practical advocacy for renewable energy, climate justice and locally led solutions.
Through collective advocacy, public mobilisation, storytelling, media engagement and evidence generation, Africa Can’t Wait will build a stronger interfaith climate movement across Africa and amplify African faith leadership in the lead-up to COP32.
The campaign calls on faith communities, civil society, youth, women, policymakers, development partners, businesses and citizens across Africa and beyond to add their voices and support the call for just implementation.
Read campaign petition is here.
The mobilisation towards one million signatures will continue throughout the campaigning period as partners work together to drive action and accountability now, while building collective momentum towards COP31 and COP32.
