Most Africans place primary responsibility for climate action on their own government

Andrews, T. M., Simpson, N. P., Krönke, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8387-9193, Schwarz Meyer, A., Trisos, C. H. and Roberts, D. (2025) Most Africans place primary responsibility for climate action on their own government. Communications Earth & Environment, 6. 260. ISSN 2662-4435 doi: 10.1038/s43247-025-02244-x

Abstract/Summary

Global increase in the pace of climate action is urgent. Yet, it is less clear who citizens expect to take the lead on climate action across different regions of the world: historical emitters, their own governments, or themselves? Our analysis of Africa’s largest public opinion survey, the Afrobarometer, across 39 countries finds that Africans place primary responsibility for addressing climate change on their own government, a further third see ordinary citizens as most responsible, while very few place responsibility on historical emitters. Multinomial logistic regression analysis shows that education, decreased poverty, and access to new media sources are associated with increased attribution of responsibility to historical emitters. Our results suggest that poverty alleviation and increased access to education, combined with professional frontline government bureaucracies can re-apportion citizen expectations of responsibility for climate action onto historical emitters and actors with more resources for scalable climate action.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/121821
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s43247-025-02244-x
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Politics and International Relations
Publisher	Springer Nature
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