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

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. About 45 percent of Africans believe their government is responsible for climate change action, and the least responsibility is attributed to countries and businesses with high greenhouse gas emissions, according to public survey data and statistical analysis.