NAIROBI - The commitments, through market-based financial instruments such as carbon credits, have been announced at the first Africa Climate Summit, taking place in Nairobi. Kenya’s President William Ruto, launched the event on Monday with a call for delegates to adopt an opportunity-oriented approach to reposition the continent’s economies instead of expressing grievances against wealthy nations that produce high emission of carbon dioxide.

The UAE Independent Climate Change Accelerators,said private sector investors under UAE Carbon Alliance would invest $450 million in buying carbon credits from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) which was launched during last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt. London-based Climate Asset Management venture also pledged a $200 million investment in projects producing ACMI credits.

The United Kingdom said it would invest $62 million in UK-backed projects across the continent. The country’s development office stated that part of the money will be used to finance new projects across 15 African countries to help women, at-risk communities, and more than 400,000 farmers to build resilience against the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, Germany announced a $65 million debt swap with Kenya to free up money for green projects. And President Ruto announced that his government will allocate $49.3 million for local climate action.

The United Arab Emirates pledged $4.5 billion to accelerate clean energy projects on the continent with funding coming from a number of sources including clean energy producer Masdar, the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and renewable energy company AMEA Power.

Delegates are expected to agree on the continent’s common position on climate change, referred to as the Nairobi Declaration at the end of the summit, ahead of the United Nations climate conference next month in New York and the COP28 summit in the United Arab Emirates in November.