The African Group of Negotiators (AGN) addressed delegates at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, on 8 October 2026. Its message was blunt: the summit’s priority must be turning existing climate pledges into practical outcomes, not producing another round of promises. The AGN represents all 54 African states in United Nations climate talks and has coordinated the continent’s negotiating position since 1995.
The bloc’s chair said predictable, grant-based adaptation finance should take priority over loan-heavy instruments that add to national debt. He called for the Loss and Damage Fund, agreed at COP27 in 2022, to be resourced at a scale that matches the damage African countries already face from floods, drought and cyclones. “Antalya must be about delivery, not another cycle of promises,” the chair said, according to a statement carried by the Ghana News Agency.
The AGN also called for stronger links between African research institutions and its own negotiating teams. It argued that technical data on climate impacts produced within Africa has been under-used in shaping the continent’s negotiating positions. Those gaps, it said, are often filled instead by modelling done outside the continent.
Framing this COP as a staging post
The AGN described COP31 as a step toward COP32, due to be hosted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, rather than an endpoint in itself. African negotiators appear to see next year’s summit on home soil as the venue where firmer commitments should be locked in. That framing reflects a broader frustration, voiced at successive COPs since Glasgow in 2021, that adaptation finance pledges have consistently fallen short of delivery against the sums promised.
Separately at COP31, the small island state of Tuvalu warned this week that climate finance must not become a debt trap for vulnerable nations. That echoes the AGN’s concern about loan-based instruments. Both interventions point to a shared push, among climate-vulnerable countries, for a larger share of finance to arrive as grants rather than loans. Both blocs intend to carry that position into the summit’s final negotiating week.
What delivery would look like
The AGN set no target figure for adaptation finance at this COP. Instead, it focused on the mechanism by which money reaches recipient countries. Grant-based finance does not need to be repaid and does not add to a country’s debt-service burden. African finance ministers have raised that distinction repeatedly, as sovereign debt levels across the continent have climbed in recent years, limiting fiscal room for climate adaptation spending from domestic budgets alone.
No formal response from COP31’s hosts or from major donor governments had arrived as of 9 October 2026. Negotiations are scheduled to continue for another week. A final finance package is expected before delegates leave Antalya, after which African ministers will return home to prepare national positions for COP32.
Why the AGN’s tone has hardened
African delegations have grown more direct in their public language at successive COPs, after years of adaptation finance commitments arriving as loans rather than grants despite repeated pledges to the contrary. The AGN’s statement this week did not name specific donor countries it believes have fallen short, focusing instead on the finance mechanism itself rather than assigning blame to any single government.
Civil society groups following the talks in Antalya say the AGN’s emphasis on COP32 in Addis Ababa is deliberate, giving African governments a home-soil deadline against which to measure whether this week’s rhetoric translates into resourced commitments over the coming year.
