CNN  —  There’s excitement bubbling in Kigali, Rwanda, ahead of the Global AI Summit on Africa, which opens today, promising economic opportunities and innovation. Not least because of last week’s announcement from Cassava Technologies, a tech firm founded by Zimbabwean telecoms billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, that it would be building Africa’s first “artificial intelligence factory,” in partnership with leading AI chipmaker Nvidia.

Eliane Ubalijoro is chief executive officer of the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), which has 270 active conservation projects around the world. “We can start with a coalition of the willing, and over the next decade, get more people involved to ensure that financing nature is something that all parts of society take a part in,” she says. Her argument: “We can all thrive together if we all invest in nature together.” To speed up delivery of money, the COP16 secretariat is tasked with encouraging a dialogue between environment and finance ministers, something that already happens in the climate space. Brian O’Donnell executive director of the conservation NGO Campaign for Nature, describes it as a key opportunity: “Process alone won't solve it, but it will certainly elevate the issue and have (ministers) recognise the challenge,” he adds. Ubalijoro agrees, and says the question now is “how do we get granular data going out so that the people who need to look at the financial flows from governments, financial flows from the private sector, from an investment world, all help us build a nature positive net zero world.” One positive sign that the financial world has got the message comes in a recent report from investors BlackRock, opens new tab, which acknowledged that more than half of GDP – some $58 trillion – is “moderately or highly dependent on nature.” Ubalijoro, who is based in Nairobi, Kenya, says: “I've been to meetings with the insurance banking community to discuss how are they accounting for nature in their bottom line. So, if we can do this here in Africa, this can be done everywhere in the world.” As the first staging post to filling the $700 billion biodiversity finance gap, developed countries (other than the U.S. which is not a signatory to the convention), agreed to come up with $20bn this year, ramping up towards $30 billion a year by 2030.

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you may have found plenty of reasons to despair. The drumbeat of crisis can be paralyzing. But in the icy stillness of Svalbard, I found something different: re...

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you may have found plenty of reasons to despair. The drumbeat of crisis can be paralyzing. But in the icy stillness of Svalbard, I found something different: re...

International Women’s Day 2025 comes at a dark time in the struggle for gender equality. As we report in the latest issue of The Ethical Corporation, the new Trump administration’s unprecedented attacks on diversity and inclusion represent a huge setback for women, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Longyearbyen, Norway, 25 February 2025 – In a historic milestone at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) deposited 120,00...

The world’s land — including its mountains, hills, plateaus and plains — provides vital services, such as oxygen, food and water, that are essential for life. Land is also home to much of the world’s…