African leaders came under pressure on Wednesday to take concrete actions against global warming at the African Development Forum in the Ethiopian capital, organisers said.
“Ethiopia’s President Girma Wolde-Giorgis has called on African leaders to ‘close the gap between rhetoric and adaptation actions’ in order to effectively address the impact of climate change across the continent,” organisers said in a statement.
Girma also urged leaders attending the forum to support African efforts to speak with a “united political voice, needed to achieve optimal results at the global level”.
The seventh African Development Forum gathered 700 experts and politicians from across the world to discuss climate change and was organised by the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union Commission and the African Development Bank.
Ethiopia’s official ENA news agency said that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had met Tuesday with his co-head of the UN’s High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, Norwegian counterpart Jens Stoltenberg.
Meles said the group had agreed on 100 billion dollars annually in financial support for developing countries and that governmental and non-governmental sources of financing had been found, according to ENA.
