By Ikugbadi Oluwasegun
Nigeria has the opportunity to scale up adaptation in a way that is both country-owned and investable. To do this, we must begin with the right foundations.
Our Climate Change Act and National Adaptation Plan already give us the legal spine. Anchoring a national platform in these instruments provides the policy certainty investors are looking for.
But we also need the right financial architecture. Imagine a National Adaptation Platform that brings together three critical elements: a facility to prepare bankable .
projects in sub-nationals through grants and technical support; a blended-finance fund that combines public resources, concessional international capital, and private investment; and a transparent pipeline registry where projects are clearly profiled and tracked. Nigeria’s own Sustainable Bond Framework — which already supports green and blue bonds — can be used to channel proceeds directly into this platform.
It is important to face the numbers. Though adaptation finance is growing, in 2021–22 Nigeria received for adaptation — just 6% of what is needed annually. And most of that was concentrated in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. Critical sectors like infrastructure, water, and coastal resilience remain severely underfunded. This is exactly why we must pursue standardization in project screening — so that adaptation projects across all sectors can be evaluated clearly, their benefits measured, and their risks reduced. Standardization will help investors move faster and spread finance more equitably.
At the same time, we must not forget the states. Subnationals are on the frontlines of climate impacts, and they hold enormous potential to deliver projects with direct impact. By building their capacity and creating climate funds at state level, we can unlock a pipeline of bankable projects in subnationals that investors can trust and finance. Initiatives like one of our Subnationals – Jigawa’s disaster trust fund show us what is possible.
Finally, we should leverage the de-risking instruments offered by multilateral banks — partial guarantees, local currency facilities, and technical guarantees — to make our adaptation projects bankable.
Colleagues, as we look ahead to COP30, let us be bold. Nigeria can demonstrate what it means to build a truly country-owned, investable adaptation platform — one that safeguards our people, strengthens our economy, and sets an example across Africa. The time to invest in resilience is now.
