By: Brian Leslie (CEO) and Dr. Chidiebere Ikejemba (Director, Climate & Environment Sector Lead)

This month, Camber Collective will formally launch the firm’s first office in Africa in Abuja, Nigeria. The new Abuja office will strengthen Camber’s connections with local and regional organizations while enhancing its ability to advise on strategy, coordination, and local implementation projects.  

Camber Collective currently has regional offices in Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Paris. The Abuja office marks the firm’s first formal presence in Africa after working closely with partners in the region for over 15 years. In adding this fifth office to Camber’s global footprint, the firm is continuing to deepen local partnerships and support community- and government-led implementation of transformative global strategies in health, environment, prosperity, and gender equality.  

One of Camber Collective’s largest efforts in the country to date has been providing support to the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s Collaborative Action Strategy (N-CAS) through the Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition. Camber has supported the first-ever effort to radically shift how the country runs health campaigns through systematic collaboration and integration across issue areas, partners, funders, providers, and government agencies. Camber has also worked with global partners in the region on research, strategy, and coalition-based projects addressing maternal health, family planning, nutrition, infectious disease, sanitation, and environmental issues. 

“Ever since we started Camber Collective, our global projects have been at the core of what we do. Bringing on team members with deep ties and years of expertise in Africa represents the culmination of years of meaningful work with partners in the region,” Brian Leslie, CEO of Camber Collective, said. “I’m eager to see how this move will strengthen our partners’ impacts and promote equitable change across the region.” 

Camber is a strategic partner to the organizations and fields dedicated to addressing the world’s most urgent challenges. Our purpose is simple: to create the conditions for an equitable and sustainable world. We work locally and globally across health, prosperity, climate, and gender equality to help our partners drive lasting impact. 

The post Camber Collective Opens Abuja Office, Expanding Global Footprint and Deepening Local Ties appeared first on Camber Collective.

Mobilizing the private sector is essential to closing persistent gaps in financing, infrastructure, and innovation.  While much of this capital and innovation originates in Western or global markets, its application and value must gear towards that of emerging economies, where health systems face the greatest climate risks. Done right, this approach can protect the most vulnerable from climate-health risks while also reinforcing economic stability, reducing long-term costs, and opening new markets for inclusive growth.

Private sector engagement must therefore be framed not only as a corporate social responsibility, but as a return-on-investment opportunity: healthier, more resilient communities reduce supply chain risks, stabilize workforces, and expand consumer markets. The report outlines four key domains where private sector action can strengthen health system resilience: 

• Innovative Financing, such as blended finance, green bonds, and outcome-based mechanisms.
• Infrastructure & Technology through renewable energy-powered facilities, and scalable digital platforms and solutions.
• Risk Management & Insurance, including climate-triggered insurance models; analytics, and protection products.
• Collaborative Partnerships that align commercial expertise with public health priorities and that build capacity to ensure workforce resilience.

Despite this potential, private sector engagement remains limited by misaligned incentives, regulatory uncertainty, weak impact measurement frameworks, and structural challenges. This report presents actionable solutions ranging from policy incentives to standardized metrics and inclusive investment models—to unlock meaningful participation.

The report calls for a shift toward more practical, results-driven collaboration between sectors, with equity—especially inclusion of women, youth, and local communities—as a core design principle for health system resilience.

Learn more about our Climate & Environment sector portfolio.

The post Report: How Private Sector Involvement Can Enhance Climate Adaptation within Health Systems appeared first on Camber Collective.

The post Protecting Our Future: Quantifying the Climate Adaptation Benefits of Health Investments for Gavi and AIIB appeared first on Camber Collective.

The post Building Bridges Across Intersections appeared first on Camber Collective.

Food Security, Urban Migration, Healthcare, Economic Wellbeing & Population Displacement

The Global South, particularly countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face the highest risk of climate vulnerability and developmental issues exacerbated by climate change. For example, the African continent contributes only a small percentage of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but its inhabitants are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and have the least infrastructure for climate resilience. These issues brought about by climate change impact local environments and trigger several serious problems that threaten the livelihood of most residents. If progressively left unchecked, these issues will undoubtedly create a near-term catastrophic retrogression in the region’s economy.

According to a study on the effects of climate change, a mere 1 °C increase in temperature in developing countries has been found to cause 2.66% lower growth in agricultural output (1). This factor alone leads to, for each degree of warming, an estimated average 1.3 percentage point-drop in economic growth.

Survival on the Line

To put it simply: as humans, our survival is based on the availability and access to Food, Clean Air, Water and Shelter. With any one of these basic needs unmet, humanity can no longer survive. Indeed, climate change threatens the availability of these resources. Of course, this is not new news – but it is urgent. A great deal must be done to return to a state of equilibrium. In rural areas of developing countries, the impacts of climate change dangerously affect the agricultural industry. Particularly, in the SSA region, farming and agriculture are the sectors at the forefront of food security and sustainable jobs. The sector also employs roughly two-thirds of the regional labor force.

The yield potential of many African crops is however not fully realized, due to over-reliance on resources such as inadequate (rain)water and a dearth of nutrients to boost crop production. Rainfed agriculture yields fewer crops, further contributing to a stunted agro sector in Africa. This dearth impacts both livelihood and survival. In addition to creating drag on local economies, poor crop yields force smallholder farmers to seek additional or alternative sources of livelihood, initiating a cascade effect that leads to forced migration to now over-populated urban areas and cities.

While urbanization is generally beneficial, most of Africa’s city dwellers live in extreme poverty—and economic suffering that is likely to increase as climate change worsens. As urbanization rates increase in some developing countries, we are beginning to see a corollary of negative wellness outcomes such as poor nutrition, pollution-related illnesses such as respiratory disease, a rise in communicable diseases, poor sanitation, and uninhabitable housing conditions. (2)

These detriments further strain available resources in urban areas. For example, Lagos is one of the world’s 10 largest cities, sprawling across 1,000 sq. km and housing 20 million inhabitants in a largely chaotic and impoverished setting. Most residents live in informal settlements, also known as slums. With no holistic water or sanitation system, disorganized transportation and extreme traffic congestion, and massive environmental issues such as noise and air pollution, this coastal city is a cataclysm waiting to happen. Indeed, it is predicted that by 2100, Lagos will be the world’s largest city, squashing 100 million people in a grave environmental and social setting.

The predicted major health problems of Lagos residents are further exacerbated by the generally poor quality of health service delivery. Less than half the continent’s population has access to health care, and family planning services are unavailable to half the continent’s women and girls.

While private healthcare is available to some, its high cost makes it unattainable to most people, as the region’s largest social challenges include unemployment and vulnerable employment, which are often linked with the effects of climate change. These challenges are growing in severity, as population growth remains high, and poverty and unemployment are also on the rise. Likewise, climate vulnerability is aggravated as there are little to no infrastructure for climate adaptation. 

Job Demand Outweighs Supply

The World Bank reported in 2013 that there would be 10 million new entrants to the labor force every year. As of 2017, other institutions—such as the International Labor Organization (ILO)—have reported that there are at least 20 million young people looking for work every year. The number of job seekers on the African continent is increasing significantly and despite all efforts so far to create more formal jobs for young people, very few of them currently stand a chance of finding employment. The statistics are stark: each year 20 million young people enter the labor market, with only a few gaining formal employment. On the potentially brighter side the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that if the sector continues to develop, renewable energy jobs could employ 43 million people by 2050.

An example of this discrepancy between job supply and demand can be seen in the country of Uganda. 400,000 young Ugandans enter the job market annually, competing for approximately 52,000 formal jobs.(3) For girls and young women, the job attainment situation is particularly dire. With fewer opportunities to work in the formal labor market, young women are often forced to seek work in the informal economy. As previously noted, climate change continues to disrupt agricultural productivity and supply chains, leading to further regional displacement from rural regions and larger cities alike, with many having no choice but to undertake the long and treacherous journey of (illegal) migration to the EU.

A Moral Obligation to Act

The Global North is responsible for 92% of excess global carbon emissions, according to a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health (4). The findings, based on the idea that the atmosphere is part of the global commons, are worrying considering many experts consider it critical to protect against global warming and climate change. There is a moral obligation to deliver upon the Polluters Pay Principle (5). It spurs sustainable development through the development of innovative strategies for climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience for developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in rural regions to ensure sustainable development.

Each further delay in redressing the detriments of climate development disequilibrium will result in future situational overload, making climate mitigation even more difficult to reach, and destroying the wellbeing and livelihood of millions of people in the not-very-distant future. For those who remain unswayed by the humanitarian imperative, a parallel emergency, based on economic is also evident: delay or lack of climate investment, infrastructure, and innovation applications in the rural and super-urban and rural areas will only make sustainable transition even more exigent. Tangentially, it will also make change, which will become necessary one way another, extremely more expensive.

Over the next series of blog posts, we will further examine the intersection and impact of climate induced changes and development.

Dr. Chidiebere E.X. Ikejemba is the Director of Climate & Environment at Camber Collective. His body of work focuses on climate equity and justice, building resilient climate-smart development programs, strengthening political will for urgent climate change action and many other levers of activation. His theory of impact operates across both the upstream and downstream of a systems chain. that encompasses investment, agriculture & food security, migration, economic & rural development, climate education, waste management (circularity), healthcare, corruption and democracy, energy access, gender inclusion and other dimensions. The circularity of Camber’s approach and theory of influence is, we believe, the most congruous path to balancing economic reality and humanitarianism.

Sources

1 – Dell, M., Jones, B. F., & Olken, B. A. (2012). Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 66-95.

2 – Kuddus, A., Tynan, E., & McBryde, E. (2020). Urbanization: a problem for the rich and the poor? Public Health Review

3 – Kappel, R. (2021). Africa’s Employment Challenges – The Ever-Widening Gap. Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung e.V.

4 – Hickel, J. (2020). Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. The Lancet Planetary Health, 399-404.

5 – The Polluters Pay Principle is the commonly accepted practice that those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment.

The post Climate Change & Survival in Sub-Saharan Africa appeared first on Camber Collective.