Africa map of Köppen climate classification.

Anthropogenic climate change is already a reality in Africa, as it is elsewhere in the world. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Africa is among the most vulnerable continents to climate change.

The vulnerability of Africa to climate change is driven by a range of factors that includes weak adaptive capacity, high dependence on ecosystem goods for livelihoods, and less developed agricultural production systems. The risks of climate change on agricultural production, food security, water resources and ecosystem services will likely have increasingly severe consequences on lives and sustainable development prospects in Africa.^[123] Managing this risk requires integration of mitigation and adaptation strategies in the management of ecosystem goods and services, and the agriculture production systems in Africa.

Over the coming decades, warming from climate change is expected across almost all the Earth’s surface, and global mean rainfall will increase.^[125] Regional effects on rainfall in the tropics are expected to be much more spatially variable and the sign of change at any one location is often less certain, although changes are expected. Consistent with this, observed surface temperatures have generally increased over Africa since the late 19th century to the early 21st century by about  1 °C, but locally as much as 3 °C for minimum temperature in the Sahel at the end of the dry season.^[126] Observed precipitation trends indicate spatial and temporal discrepancies as expected.^[127][121] The observed changes in temperature and precipitation vary regionally.

In terms of adaptation efforts, regional-level actors are making some progress. This includes the development and adoption of several regional climate change adaptation strategies^[129] e.g. SADC Policy Paper Climate Change,^[130] and the adaptation strategy for the water sector.^[131] In addition, there has been other efforts to enhance climate change adaptation, such as the tripatite Programme on Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA-EAC-SADC).

As a supranational organisation of 55 member states, the African Union has put forward 47 goals and corresponding actions in a 2014 draft report^[133] to combat and mitigate climate change on the continent. The Secretary General of the United Nations has also declared a need for close cooperation with the African Union in order to tackle climate change, in accordance with the UN’s sustainable development goals.