Africa faces a mounting dual challenge at the critical nexus of climate and health. Climate change is intensifying health risks by driving extreme weather events, shifting disease vector patterns, degrading air quality, and threatening food and water security. Rising temperatures and erratic rainfall are accelerating the spread of climate-sensitive diseases such as malaria, dengue and cholera, while droughts and floods undermine agricultural productivity and nutrition. Vulnerable populations such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, and low-income populations in rural and urban areas are at even greater risk.
These pressures are compounded by the vulnerability of health infrastructure, with facilities often facing water shortages and unreliable power and supply chains during crises. This creates a clear opportunity for climate-resilient upgrades, from solar electrification of health facilities to ensure uninterrupted cold chains and essential services, to climate-proofed supply routes.
In addition, many African countries and health systems are already strained by high disease burdens and chronic underinvestment, and must now contend with these climate-related shocks on top of existing demands. Many operate with limited workforce capacity, fragile supply chains and uncertain financing, leaving them ill-equipped to manage surges in cases of heat stress, respiratory illnesses, water-borne diseases and malnutrition. Without targeted investment in integrated climate-health solutions, these health systems risk becoming overwhelmed, reversing hard-won gains in public health and undermining resilience across some of the most climate-vulnerable communities in the world.
Building on the Economics of Prevention
The intersection of climate change and health presents a compelling investment case in Africa, grounded in the economics of prevention and presenting opportunities for social and financial returns to both public and private funders. Across the continent, billions are spent annually treating climate-sensitive diseases. Preventing diseases not only reduces treatment costs but also preserves workforce productivity and frees constrained healthcare capacity for other needs. Over time, these avoided costs and productivity gains compound, strengthening community health outcomes, reinforcing local health system resilience and reducing fiscal strain on governments.
Consider malaria, which kills over 600,000 people annually, predominantly in Africa. Climate change is expanding the geographic and seasonal range of malaria transmission. Recent studies have shown significant association between precipitation, temperature, accelerated mosquito vector and parasite development, and increased malaria transmission in sub-Saharan African countries. The economic implications are substantial: Malaria costs African economies around $12 billion annually in lost productivity, and is estimated to slow economic growth in endemic countries by between 0.7% and 3% per year. Research published in 2025 by Malaria No More and Corporate Council on Africa finds that every dollar invested by the United States in malaria control on the continent generates $5.80 in economic growth, reducing the “malaria tax” — i.e., a combination of lower productivity, increasing healthcare costs and operational challenges that can reduce GDP by up to 1.3% annually in heavily affected regions. Given the $126.9 billion in untapped GDP waiting to be unlocked through malaria elimination, prevention represents a significant economic opportunity hiding in plain sight.
Investing in climate-resilient health infrastructure is effectively an investment in long-term economic productivity. By mid-century, Africa will represent a significant share of the world’s labor force, so protecting this workforce will be increasingly essential for global economic growth. And on a local level, maximizing these workers’ health is simply a smart investment for African economies. Climate-health investments can generate measurable outcomes: reduced disease incidence, lower mortality, improved labor productivity and fiscal savings. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa estimates Africa’s health infrastructure financing gap at $66 billion annually, and the Climate Policy Initiative estimates that climate adaptation needs exceed $50 billion per year. These represent a substantial market gap for both public and private sector funders, driven by demographic and workforce expansion, rapid urbanization, and rising climate volatility that will continue to increase demand for resilient and adaptive health systems.
Whether it’s solar electrification that mitigates against healthcare facility downtime, climate-smart surveillance or early-warning systems that contain disease outbreaks, or resilient supply chains that avoid disruption to critical health commodities, climate health investments help manage broader macroeconomic risk and systemic shocks, avoiding everyday economic disruption and larger GDP contractions. For individuals, this means improved continuity of care. For governments, this means more productive economies. For investors, this means lower investment risk due to stronger economies and health systems.
Growing integration across the climate, energy and health sectors
Many African governments have started integrating climate resilience into national health infrastructure planning and budgeting. This has been complemented by strategic initiatives, such as The Rwanda Clean Cooking Results-Based Financing Initiative, an instrument designed to support private clean cooking companies in promoting the sale and sustained use of these technologies. Since 2021, the program has contributed towards meaningfully improving household air quality and respiratory health. It is also projected to generate approximately Rwf 27 billion in carbon credit revenues by the end of 2026, and has engaged 20 companies to distribute stoves and liquid petroleum gas systems to over 460,000 households.
Various donors and multilaterals have continued to invest as well. For example, healthcare facility electrification has increasingly been a focus of Sustainable Energy for All’s work with development partners and local governments, and last year, the Swedish Government and Clinton Health Access Initiative launched a new partnership for the electrification of healthcare facilities across South Africa, Eswatini, Malawi and Kenya.
Some promising climate-health business models and innovations have also successfully emerged in recent years, like Zipline, which delivers medical supplies to the last-mile through low-emission, cold-chain friendly and rapid-response drones, and Koolboks, which sells solar-powered cold storage products to preserve vaccines (and other temperature-regulated goods) in off-grid environments.
But while this momentum is encouraging, these efforts are not nearly integrated enough.
While donors and governments increasingly recognize that climate resilience and health outcomes are deeply intertwined, most interventions classified as “climate-health” remain siloed and weighted toward one sector or the other. These initiatives should accord equal priority to both climate and health outcomes, but when they are managed by climate-focused organizations or agencies, they often relegate health to a secondary outcome, and when they’re organized by health-focused entities, they rarely embed climate adaptation into their program design.
Additionally — and more importantly — these programs often have a limited focus on local private sector development. For local governments to develop sustainable climate-resilient health infrastructure, they must find ways to strengthen the private sector and crowd-in capital. This will require better-designed public-private partnerships, in which innovators, technologies and supply chain partners more effectively complement public priorities. That will only be possible when capital providers such as impact investors, institutional investors, banks and blended finance structures have access to strong investible pipeline opportunities that create clear impact in the broader health system.
Yet despite the limited capacity of health systems to adapt to changing climate conditions, there is insufficient support available to the private sector, particularly local climate-health enterprises, to help drive innovation and scalable solutions. To take one example, the current incubation and acceleration ecosystem is often not designed to support enterprises operating at the intersection of climate and health. As a result, these businesses remain underdeveloped and struggle to move from proof-of-concept to viable scale. They need access to deep sectoral expertise that keeps pace with rapidly emerging climate health approaches and technologies, and connections with likeminded peers and partners, along with tailored long-term support from patient capital providers that understand the social impact and financial opportunity that climate-health solutions represent.
Looking Forward: What’s needed to develop the ecosystem for sustainable climate-health investments?
As climate change is primed to worsen in the coming years, it’s clear that health systems must evolve. The case for action is strong: Africa’s population is rapidly growing, climate-related events continue to intensity health risks, and climate health investments can help manage the broader macroeconomic risks and systemic shocks the continent will surely face. But doing so will require increasing the capacity of both the public and private sectors. It will require a systemic lens and ecosystem-focused approach that will make capital more catalytic, create stronger and fairer market forces, and foster collaboration between stakeholders across the climate health value chain.
The opportunity is now to build the market, define opportunities and catalyze strategic partnerships. While countries and regions are likely to have different approaches, given the variance of climate-related impacts, several elements need to be present in these solutions. Africa needs dedicated climate health investment vehicles, a better framework to leverage carbon credits, stronger data and policy infrastructure and frameworks, and an accelerated pipeline of credible innovations that reach remote areas and move beyond the Silicon Savannah. Additionally, the continent needs:
- More context-specific support for business models and innovations that address climate-health risks: This could be accomplished by developing dedicated support platforms that meet multiple needs, like knowledge sharing, incubation/acceleration and investment, or by creating new investment windows that specifically support enterprise building (knowledge, skills, networks) and investment pipeline generation, especially in underrepresented regions like West and Southern Africa. This would include tailored end-to-end support for promising business models and innovations, targeting the overlooked space where stronger health systems, climate adaptation and resilient local markets intersect.
- Structured capital that enables investments, and that is accessible at scale: This could be accomplished by approaching climate-health as a dedicated asset class in which different investments have common characteristics, like similar underlying assets and risk-return profiles, repeatable deal structures for investors, and replicable assessment frameworks and measurable outcomes. This could help create a common language and positive signals that would begin to crowd-in investor participation and scale investments in the space. Additionally, creating new blended finance structures would allow for co-participation between local governments and private sector businesses in building climate-resilient infrastructure. To that end, the Climate and Health Funders Coalition’s US $300 million commitment for integrated climate health action, Grand Challenges Canada’s CAD $6.3 million seed funding to 42 climate health innovations, and the US $50 million Climate and Health Catalytic Fund are promising steps in the right direction.
- Market shaping that helps build the investment case: This could be accomplished by structuring public-private partnerships that address market gaps or that anchor advance market commitments for climate-health products, or by building the evidence base of climate-health innovation, to help prove-out social and financial impacts on local economies.
In today’s world, climate-health is not a secondary theme. It is a critical and strategic investment frontier that needs sufficient attention and action. The question is not whether Africa’s health systems must be climate-resilient, but how this resilience will be structured at scale.
Dr. Rajat Chabba is Senior Director of Innovation and Partnerships at The William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
Martin Slawek is Associate Partner at Open Capital Advisors and leads its healthcare practice.
Photo credit: pcess609
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