March Field Notes: What Western Africa Taught Me That No Climate Framework Ever Has
- Marta PANCO
- Apr 9
- 4 min read
I went to West Africa to work.
Three weeks. Two countries. Two assignments: capacity building for 90 participants from Benin's Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock on National Determined Contribution (NDC) and National Adaptation Plan (NAP) climate planning; and Environmental and Social Management System training for AGRA staff in Burkina Faso.
I came back changed.
Not because of what I delivered in the training rooms, though that work matters deeply. But West Africa showed me something outside of them.
It confirmed everything I am building at Azaka Consulting.
Ganvié: 400 Years of Climate Adaptation Nobody Talks About
On a Saturday between training sessions, I took a boat onto Lake Nokoué.
And found a city—the "Venice of Africa" as it's called by the locals.
Ganvié is the only silt city in Africa, and 30,000 people live entirely on water. Built in the 17th century by the Tofinu people to escape slave traders who, by spiritual law, could not cross water. What began as survival became civilisation.
Children as young as three own their parcel of water, a fishing area allocated through generations, just as the land is distributed to the family boys, where they steward and call their own. They learn to navigate a boat before they learn to walk on land. There is a small artificial island built specifically so children can practice walking on solid ground.
The land we are so used to is foreign terrain for them.
I had spent the previous week helping government officials build GHG inventories and climate adaptation plans. Rigorous, important work. And then I visited a community doing climate adaptation for 400 years without a framework, without a donor, without a NAP.
The most important climate lesson I learned this year came from a boat on a lake in Benin.
The communities most resilient to climate disruption are not always the ones with the best-funded plans. They are the ones with the deepest accumulated knowledge — embedded in how they build, how they fish, how they teach their children.
That knowledge is almost never captured in the data that drives investment decisions.
Bridging that gap, between what communities know and what investors need to see, is what Azaka Consulting exists to do.
Ouidah: The Coincidence That Wasn't
The night before visiting Ouidah, I ordered a cocktail called Sakpata at Vodun Bar in Cotonou.
I had no idea what it meant.
Sakpata is the Vodun deity of the earth, of the soil, of the ground, of the land that sustains everything and nourishes us.
The next day, I found myself standing beside the drummers at a Sakpata initiation ceremony in Ouidah. Girls as young as three are dancing around an ancient tree. Drums are felt in the chest before heard by the ears. We were taken to the front row by a guide who sensed my interest.
I was not supposed to be there.
In Abomey, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, I visited a temple built in the shape of a 10-meter stone chameleon with a Vodun temple hidden inside its stomach. In Vodun tradition, the chameleon is sacred—it changes colour to adapt, bridging the physical and spiritual worlds.
Benin doesn't do coincidences.
And Vodun teaches something conservation finance is only beginning to understand: nature is not a resource to be extracted. It is the foundation on which everything else stands.
The Policy Room: Data Is Political
Back in the training room, six days with Benin's Ministry of Agriculture, supported by the Climate Action Africa programme funded by the Government of Canada.
One theme surfaced in every session: The data doesn't reflect who is actually on the ground.
Women account for 60-80% of food production in sub-Saharan Africa. They manage seed selection, soil health, and water access. They carry generational ecological knowledge that formal systems have never documented.
Yet in most GHG inventories and climate adaptation plans, they are invisible.
This is not just an equity problem. It is a data quality problem. A planning effectiveness problem. A risk management problem for every investor and institution working in African agriculture.
You cannot build a climate plan on incomplete data.
Burkina Faso: Resilience Through the Dust
Ouagadougou greeted me with Harmattan dust—500 meters of visibility, red haze, and air that sits in your chest, burns your eyes, and blocks your nose.
For the people here, this is a seasonal reality. For me, it was two days, and a reminder of what climate vulnerability actually feels like when you breathe it.
I was there to deliver ESMS and grievance mechanism training for AGRA how communities raise concerns when investments affect them, and how risks are caught before they become crises.
The team already understood what many investors don't:
A grievance mechanism that communities actually trust is not bureaucratic overhead. It is the difference between a project that generates returns and one that generates conflict.
Through the dust, Ouagadougou moved with extraordinary energy. Women on motorcycles with children on their backs. Colour and movement in every direction.
Resilience here is not a framework. It is a daily practice.
The Thread Connecting All of It
From Cotonou to Ouagadougou, one truth running through all of it:
The communities that will prove most resilient are not waiting for plans. They have been building resilience for centuries, in boats, in ceremonies, in the way they teach their children to fish.
The best conservation and climate investments will learn from that and not arrive with solutions already written. That is the approach I bring to every assignment, every due diligence, every training room.
Found this useful? The Azaka Intelligence Report goes deeper — monthly field intelligence from East and West Africa's conservation and climate landscape.
Marta Panco is the founder of Azaka Consulting
Based in Nairobi. LinkedIn | Instagram | azakaconsulting.com
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