The Africa Climate Mobility Initiative is a people-centred and evidence-based Initiative, aiming to generate political momentum around a common policy agenda and to mobilise resources for the implementation of comprehensive and locally anchored solutions to address climate mobility.

The Africa Climate Mobility Initiative’s cornerstones are knowledge-building, connecting and empowering change agents and accelerating policy and project implementation underpinned by strategic partnerships.

The Africa Climate Mobility Initiative is a joint undertaking of the African Union Commission, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the International Organization for Migration, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Initiative’s efforts are coordinated by the Global Centre for Climate Mobility.

The ACMI findings and recommendations for action build upon two research inputs.

In collaboration with the Mixed Migration Centre, the ACMI collected data among frontline communities in seven locations on the African continent that are already affected by severe climate impacts. Through surveys, interviews and focus group discussions the research explored how climate stressors are perceived and influence people’s aspirations, capabilities, and decisions to move.

Together with Columbia University and researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the City University of New York, the ACMI built a novel Africa Climate Mobility model to project future climate mobility scenarios for the continent out to 2050. The model forecasts the direct and indirect effects of climate impacts on the population distribution in the continent, including areas of prospective in and out movement.

The Africa Climate Mobility model builds upon similar forecasting undertaken for the World Bank’s Groundswell reports, but updates and expands inputs to the model, considering factors such as sea level rise, flooding, water availability, crop yields, range land productivity, and violence.