Director-General of the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC), Dr. Nkiruka Chidia-Maduekwe, has said that Africa will continue to push for the reform of climate financial architecture.

Chidia-Maduekwe stated this in an interview with journalists at the Nigerian pavilion at the ongoing COP29 in Baku Azerbaijan.

She explained that this will ensure that the African continent is not burdened with more loans to meet its climate change obligations.

“We are being told to have an ambitious National Determined Contribution, NDC, but then where is the finance going to come from? So in every forum, we always highlight the need to blend finance,” she said.

The Director General noted that there is a distinction between development finance and climate finance because they lump all these together, so we’re saying there has to be a difference.

According to her, “That’s one. Two, what we have seen happen in this COP 29 is an amplified position for methane. The conversation has started and the push is a lot here in this. We’ve seen high-level meetings organised by China and the United States.”

She said, “We’ve seen these high-level side events on methane, and we need to take the issue of short pollutants, short-lived pollutants that we call super pollutants. This is very important.”

Chidia-Maduekwe explained that “we have not just methane, but carbon, and black carbon as well. This conversation is at the forefront. And of course, you already know that Nigeria signed an MOU with China.”

She expressed delight that Nigeria has a nuclear regulatory agency to ensure the safety of the citizens and in the diversification of the energy mix, nuclear is a low-hanging fruit.

“And it’s clean energy and it’s also going to take us out of the carbon energy space. So it’s one of the options, alternatives we have in our energy mix,” she said.