In 2022, governments spent nearly $1.5 trillion supporting fossil fuels, almost twice as much as a year earlier, according to the joint inventory of the OECD and the International Energy Agency. Most of it went to lowering the prices consumers pay.

The IMF goes further: once the health and environmental costs that nobody pays are included, it puts the real bill at $7 trillion, or 7.1% of gross world product. That sum alone exceeds the annual financing gap for the Sustainable Development Goals in developing countries, which UNCTAD estimates at $4.3 trillion. The shortage, then, is not in the coffers. It is in the priorities.

Savings sitting on the wrong continent

The story of scarcity hides a second, quieter misunderstanding, and it concerns Africa directly. In 2024, remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached $685 billion, more than foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined. West and Central Africa are among the regions that depend on them most: these flows exceed 4% of regional GDP there, against less than 1% on average worldwide. For millions of families, from Bouaké to Douala, they mean school fees paid, a roof repaired, a prescription filled.

Yet that figure tells only part of the story. The African diaspora, some 140 million people, also saves about $53 billion a year in its countries of residence, according to a World Bank estimate taken up by the African Development Bank. That money stays where it is, in current accounts, savings accounts and insurance policies, at rates that barely cover inflation. Meanwhile, a few thousand kilometres away, a reforestation project in the Congo Basin or a solar farm in northern Côte d’Ivoire struggles to raise a few million dollars of seed capital. The money exists. It is simply sitting, in silence, on the wrong continent.

A problem of channels

Why does this money stay on the other side of the Mediterranean? The will is there; the channel is missing. A savings account opened in the country of residence offers three guarantees that a West African green project rarely combines: liquidity, a stable currency and the implicit backing of the state. A recycling SME in Yaoundé or an agrivoltaic cooperative near Korhogo may be perfectly profitable on paper; it still carries the exchange-rate risk, the country risk and the absence of any safety net on its own.

The problem therefore lies less in returns than in perceived risk, which no individual saver has any interest in bearing alone.

Plumbing that has proved itself

This plumbing already exists, and it works. Ethiopia led the way on the continent as early as 2008. In 2017, Nigeria raised $300 million from its diaspora in a single bond issue, 130% subscribed. In Senegal, the Banque de l’Habitat placed 20 billion CFA francs of “Diaspora Bonds” in 2019 to finance access to housing. Côte d’Ivoire is now preparing the same instrument. The principle is simple: offer the diaspora an investment in local currency, with a guaranteed return, earmarked for identified projects, and give these dormant savings a use at home rather than a paltry rate elsewhere.

Guaranteeing the exchange-rate risk

That leaves the obstacle of trust and exchange-rate risk. This is precisely the role of the guarantee mechanisms of the multilateral development banks: hybrid capital, guarantees from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. They can absorb part of the risk and make these green bonds attractive without demanding prohibitive rates. The African Development Bank estimates that Africa could raise up to $17 billion a year by pledging its future export or remittance receipts as collateral. And that calculation still leaves aside the $53 billion in savings lying dormant outside the continent.

A choice, not an observation

The transition does not suffer from a shortage of capital. It suffers from a shortage of architecture. As long as the world goes on subsidising its own combustion to the tune of $1.5 trillion a year, while leaving its diaspora’s savings idle thousands of kilometres from where they could be put to use, the phrase “there is no money for the climate” will remain what it has always been: not an observation, but a choice.