Two regional research hubs that aim to develop climate adaptation strategies that reduce health impacts are to be established in Ghana and South Africa under the terms of a new £40 million climate-health initiative led by African universities and the Wellcome Trust, announced on Thursday.

Along with the two hubs in South Africa and Ghana, an additional £20 million has been earmarked for a third hub in East Africa, with the site yet to be determined.

The aim is to develop provide policymakers on the continent with tailor-made scientific data and strategies for shielding vulnerable populations from the intensifying health threats of extreme heat, flooding, air pollution and worsening nutrition – which already kill millions of people every year.

“Africa is on the frontline of climate change, with women and marginalized communities already suffering the worst health impacts,” stressed Charlotte Watts, Executive Director of Solutions at the Wellcome Trust, in Thursday’s statement.

The hubs will link scientists across diverse disciplines along with policymakers, and community partners, to generate effective strategies protecting human health.

The South African hub, anchored at the University of the Witwatersrand, will address extreme heat in South Africa and Zimbabwe, alongside issues like devastating flooding in Malawi. The goal is to overcome the knowledge and financial barriers constraining essential care for affected communities, according to consortium lead Matthew Chersich, Professor at the Wits Planetary Health Research Division.

Meanwhile, the Western Africa consortium anchored at Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, will tackle environmental hazards that are characteristic of that region, such as intense dust storms and prolonged droughts along with heat waves. Intensifying climate risks are straining fragile public health systems and disrupting livelihoods across the region, warned the Western Africa lead Philip Antwi-Agyei, Professor of Climate Change and Sustainability Science.

Currently, uncoordinated policies pose a massive challenge to protecting vulnerable populations in nations like Ghana and Senegal, Antwi-Agyei argued.

“Health leaders across Africa make vital decisions with limited resources, so having access to rigorous, context-relevant evidence is essential,” added Adelheid Onyango, Director of the Health Systems and Services Cluster at the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa.

A continent bearing a disproportionate climate-health burden

This African initiative arrives against a grim global backdrop, as the 2025 Lancet Countdown report recently revealed that 12 out of 20 key climate-health indicators have hit catastrophic records. Extreme heat exposure alone claimed an estimated 546,000 lives annually over the last decade. Some 2.5 million people are estimated to die every year from air pollution generated by fossil fuel use.

While Africa contributes minimally to global emissions, it bears the greatest burden of climate change.

Compounding these health vulnerabilities is a massive infrastructure deficit, with roughly 600 million Africans still lacking basic access to electricity. Consequently, about half of the health centres in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from unreliable power, severely disrupting emergency care and vaccine refrigeration capabilities.

Furthermore, the world’s poorest countries are now spending more on debt service than on healthcare, education, and infrastructure combined. This ongoing debt trap leaves health systems chronically underfunded and unable to cope with rising climate-health disease burdens.

African member states fought hard to support the full adoption of a new WHO action plan on climate change and health, approved by the World Health Assembly in May 2025 The initiative actively encourages countries to transition their critical health facilities toward reliable, renewable energy sources to boost overall climate-health resilience.

Building a climate-health fortress of evidence

Ensuring African communities possess the necessary expertise to navigate the complex challenges of climate change is a pillar of Wellcome’s climate and health strategy. The new consortiums hold massive potential to foster essential innovation, Modi Mwatsama, Head of Capacity and Field Development at Wellcome stated.

Looking ahead, the hubs also will pioneer health-centred approaches to reducing carbon emissions – building more stakeholder support for climate mitigation and the carbon transition. And they will also prioritize delivering specialized care solutions for the most at-risk demographic groups, including pregnant women, children, and older individuals.

Advocates view the integration of scientific rigour and local policymaking as a crucial step toward achieving more robust climate-health policies and broader climate justice for the global South.

The funding will help build a stronger “fortress of evidence” that the world urgently requires right now, said Philip Kilonzo, of the PanAfrican Climate Justice Alliance.

Image Credits: piyaset/Getty Images via Canva, WHO, Felix Sassmannshausen, Wellcome Trust.