Education at the Center of Climate Finance: Building Equity, Peace, and Stability in Eastern and Southern Africa

• In Event: Climate, Education, and Peace: Financing Resilience in a Warming World

Proposal

Drawing on work in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), this paper explores how climate change is disrupting education and why urgent financing solutions are needed to build resilience. In 2024 alone, at least 242 million students globally experienced climate-related school disruptions, with one in seven children affected. In ESA, where over 107 million children were already out of school, an additional 20 million faced interruptions due to floods, cyclones, and prolonged droughts. These disruptions not only erode learning outcomes but also heighten risks of dropout, child marriage, and child labor, undermining education’s role as a driver of stability and peace.

This regional engagement shows that while education is one of the most disrupted services during climate crises, it remains largely overlooked in climate policy and financing. Loss and damage assessments demonstrate that the sector is highly exposed through destroyed infrastructure and the longer-term erosion of human capital. Yet global and national financing mechanisms continue to channel limited resources toward education. For example, Cyclone Freddy in Malawi in 2023 devastated classrooms and forced prolonged learning interruptions for thousands of children, with post-disaster needs assessments highlighting significant financing shortfalls for education recovery. In Mozambique, repeated cyclones have destroyed thousands of classrooms, illustrating both the scale of recurrent shocks and the cost-saving potential of investing in resilient school infrastructure upfront. Correcting the financing imbalance is essential to protect children’s right to learn and to address inequities deepened by climate shocks.

This study contribution highlights three financing pathways for resilience. First, mainstreaming education into climate finance instruments to secure allocations from global financing facilities. Second, developing blended financing approaches that combine public budgets, climate funds, concessional lending, and private capital to close gaps at scale. Third, linking youth skilling and green jobs to climate adaptation financing, creating cross-sectoral investment cases that draw on education and environment funding streams to leverage the region’s large youth population to sustain educational continuity while contributing to longer-term economic and social stability.

Financing resilience in education is not only about shielding schools from climate shocks; it is about safeguarding equity, peace, and justice. Positioning education at the heart of climate financing offers governments and partners a double dividend: protecting today’s learners and equipping tomorrow’s generation with the skills and resilience to build sustainable and peaceful societies in a warming world.

Author

• Polycarp Omondi Otieno, UNICEF ESARO