Local Governments’ Responses to the Impact of Climate Change in Selected African Countries: A Review

Abstract

Climate change has severe and disproportionate impacts on Africa, where vulnerability is heightened by limited adaptive capacity and overdependence on climate-sensitive sectors. While national-level adaptation initiatives have received wider intellectual investigation, little is researched on how key actors, such as local governments, respond to climate change across the African continent. Using a traditional review approach, this article examines the outcomes and challenges of local governments’ climate change adaptation initiatives in selected African countries. Drawing exclusively on multi-level governance, vulnerability frameworks, and institutional theory perspectives, this article provides a synthesis of local climate change adaptation responses across diverse African countries.  I find that while some African countries face nascent and fragmented climate change adaptation frameworks, a few have effectively integrated climate change into decentralised planning systems.  Despite these efforts, constraints such as inadequate coordination, weak institutional capacity, limited financial resources, and dependence on donor-driven initiatives result in largely short-term and reactive interventions. There is a need to prioritise sustainable financing mechanisms, enhance coordination across governance levels, and strengthen local government capacity to support context-specific and effective adaptation.