Unequal exchanges and a low prioritisation of the continent are just some of the challenges faced by African countries in global financing. 

These concerns were raised by delegates at a side meeting of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture conference on climate finance transparency and green growth, held in Windhoek. 

Weak negotiations globally, underselling of products, illegal flow of products out of Africa, and crippling debt, coupled with high interest rates, are some of the challenges facing African countries.

Countries on the continent spend three to five percent of their GDP on climate change responses, 

And should things remain as usual, Africa's combined GDP risks a drop of two to four percent by 2040.  

The Director of the Centre for Sustainability Transition-Stellenbosch University, Prof. Mark Swilling, says, "Global financial flows subverse the African development agenda, and there is not a lot of research, especially by Africans, on how financial flows undermine the African development agenda. Unequal exchange can be documented now for the first time because there is a global data base that has been consolidated for the past five years. We have to get serious about the global financial system, and we have to figure out how to mobilise our own resources but not to focus on how the rest of the world owes something; they do, but they do not care about us."

It is for this reason that delegates from different universities across Africa are developing a regional programme to look at different ways to finance climate change.   

Prof. Gorettie Nabanoga, the Principal of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science at Makerere University, says, "Climate change, climate financing, and the activities that come with it are an obligation of every person on planet Earth, and we want to liverage on our partners who might be better resourced but have an agenda to support this kind of initiative." Most of us who are new to this concept must have an open mind. To make sure that Africa that we want should have those innovations that are going to protect the environment."

The side meeting further considered a massive capacity-building programme to tap into climate finance flows, a reinvention of risk, mobilisation of domestic pension funds, and the key role of industrial policy formation, among others.