Under the adaptation finance pillar of the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) — a joint initiative between the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) — GCA began engaging private sector financial institutions to de-risk lending portfolios, build institutional capacity, and identify market-ready adaptation investment opportunities aligned with national and sectoral resilience priorities.

This Handbook contains articles to support professional skills for participants of the Youth Academy on Climate Adaptation and Leadership – a training-of-trainer’s model developed by the Global Center on Adaptation in partnership with the University of Nairobi and the University of Groningen. The University of Groningen Business School in the Netherlands is one of the program’s partners and has compiled this Handbook. This Handbook is the revised edition of the Handbooks, Part One and Part Two, which were released in 2024.

Led by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC), this assessment brings together expertise via the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), with technical analyses undertaken by the University of Oxford and the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), and support from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands. The aim of this assessment is to quantify the impact of climate hazards on the provision of infrastructure services and the achievement of the country’s development objectives under current and projected climate scenarios.

This Adaptation Insight builds on GCA’s technical assistance under the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program, which has influenced DCAS integration across 17 major agricultural investment projects across Africa with the potential to improve resilience for millions of smallholder farmers. It draws on the expertise and insights developed in deep collaboration and engagement with governments, international finance institutions, CGIAR and private sector partners to provide a practical roadmap for moving from scattered pilots to scalable, country-owned national systems.

Africa stands at a critical crossroads where climate change is not just an environmental challenge but a profound security imperative. Increasingly frequent droughts, floods, and water stress are fueling instability and conflict across the Sahel and Horn of Africa, with far-reaching consequences for regional and global peace. Adaptation is no longer a distant development goal—it is central to safeguarding stability, resilience, and security.

In 2025, the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) built upon the success of the Pilot Youth Academy on Climate Adaptation and Leadership by hosting the Pan-African Youth Academy on Climate Adaptation and Leadership, a training-of-trainers program designed to equip participants with the skills and knowledge to replicate climate adaptation training in their home countries.

This Adaptation Insights builds on GCA technical assistance to integrate green and grey adaptation measures into large-scale infrastructure investment programs under the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program. It further draws on advanced research conducted by the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, in partnership with GCA, on the application of spatial analytics and financial frameworks to scale nature-based solutions for transport infrastructure resilience globally (Scaling Investments for NbS: GCA portal). The observations presented reflect cumulative evidence and experience derived from collaboration with multilateral development banks and implementation partners engaged in mainstreaming climate adaptation within infrastructure planning and finance.

This guideline is prepared by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), in collaboration with the World Bank and the Kenya State Department of Housing and Urban Development to support the implementation of the Second Kenya Urban Support Program (KUSP-II).

This technical brief examines the critical intersection of Africa’s growing solar PV investments and climate resilience. With nearly 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa lacking electricity access and solar PV investments reaching $36.6 billion in 2023, the continent faces both enormous opportunity and significant climate-related risks to energy infrastructure.