Enhancing the climate resilience of Africa’s water and energy infrastructure

This fact sheet by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) describes a study on enhancing the climate resilience of water and energy infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) system and the Open Source Energy Modeling System (OSeMOSYS), SEI evaluated seven major river basins to estimate the economic risks posed by climate change to hydropower and irrigation, providing recommendations for robust investment decision-making.

• SEI analyzed seven major river basins in Sub-Saharan Africa—the Congo, Orange, Niger, Nile, Senegal, Volta, and Zambezi—which collectively possess approximately 200 GW of hydropower capacity and could increase irrigation capacity by over 60%.
• Climate change presents significant economic risks to infrastructure across all analyzed basins. The Niger River is identified as having the highest risk, with potential costs reaching $200 billion if resilience is not improved, while the Zambezi River faces the highest uncertainty, with estimated costs ranging from $50 billion to $125 billion.
• To reduce risks to irrigation and hydropower systems, SEI recommends that policy-makers shift current practices to integrate multidisciplinary expertise. Specific recommendations include developing technical guidelines for climate-sensitive sectors, promoting an open-data knowledge repository, establishing a project preparation facility for climate resilience, launching professional training programs, and creating an observatory on climate-resilient infrastructure development in Africa.
• Africa requires annual investments exceeding US$90 billion to address its infrastructure gap. The Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) provides a long-term plan to close this gap by 2040, focusing on electricity, roads, sanitation, water access, water storage capacity, and hydroelectric power generation.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2019). Enhancing the climate resilience of Africa’s water and energy infrastructure. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/enhancing-the-climate-resilience-of-africas-water-and-energy-infrastructure.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Enhancing the climate resilience of Africa’s water and energy infrastructure. 2019. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/enhancing-the-climate-resilience-of-africas-water-and-energy-infrastructure.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Enhancing the climate resilience of Africa’s water and energy infrastructure |date=October 2019 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/enhancing-the-climate-resilience-of-africas-water-and-energy-infrastructure.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2019enhancing, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Enhancing the climate resilience of Africa’s water and energy infrastructure}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2019}, month = oct, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/enhancing-the-climate-resilience-of-africas-water-and-energy-infrastructure.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }