After the mid-2025 rainy season underwhelmed in the Tadjourah region of Djibouti – the small, Francophone nation wedged between Ethiopia and Somalia - authorities faced a crisis as thousands of nomads began to journey from the arid interior to the coastline in search of water. To make matters worse, crippling overseas aid cuts from Donald Trump in the US meant that emergency pools of funding were no longer easily available.
What authorities in Tadjourah then did is something that would not have been possible just a couple of years prior, and which potentially holds huge significance for cash-strapped African governments reeling from aid cuts. They sent an emergency request to Djibouti’s Sovereign Carbon Agency (SCA) – a national body established in 2023 to manage money raised by the country’s pioneering levy on emissions - to ask for support.
