Dr. George Wamukoya, OGW, Team Lead at the African Group of Negotiators Experts Support (AGNES), participated in the AWARD Climate Action Fellowship launch, addressing AGNES’s role in fostering climate resilience.
In response to a question on AGNES’s contributions to climate action, Dr. Wamukoya emphasized the organization’s Climate Governance, Diplomacy, and Negotiations Leadership Program as a key initiative addressing critical knowledge gaps.
He highlighted four major areas where AGNES seeks to bridge these gaps:
🔹Policy, Science, and Decision-Making: Strengthening the link between policymakers, scientists, and decision-makers to enhance climate-informed policies.
🔹Technical Capacity – Publishing: Addressing the underrepresentation of African contributions in global reports, citing the AR6 IPCC report as an example. AGNES has supported African scientists in publishing their research to fill these gaps.
🔹Climate Diplomacy: Supporting African countries in international negotiations, especially as nations reassess diplomatic ties and prioritize participation in global climate forums.
🔹Science-Policy-Practice Nexus: Ensuring that scientific findings translate into actionable policy and on-the-ground solutions.
Advancing Climate Leadership in Africa
Dr. Wamukoya noted that AGNES’s Climate Governance, Diplomacy, and Negotiations Leadership Program is currently in its 18th cohort, with representation from all 54 African countries. The program has evolved to a more advanced level, incorporating three specialized courses:
🔹Climate Change Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Management
🔹Climate Finance and Innovative Business Models Digital Technologies, Machine Learning, and AI in Climate Change
🔹Gender and Climate Action
Gender and Climate Action
Additionally, Dr. Wamukoya spoke on AGNES’s Gender Vulnerability Hotspot Mapping Initiative, which has been implemented in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Botswana and is expanding to Ghana, Senegal, and Ethiopia. These maps are designed to inform policy decisions by identifying gendered climate vulnerabilities.
He urged AWARD Fellows to focus on evidence generation to support policy decisions. He emphasized that many African countries struggle to access climate finance due to weak climate rationale in their funding proposals. He encouraged a stronger integration of scientific research with policy advocacy to secure resources for climate resilience efforts. CIFOR-ICRAF International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Aditi Mukherji
