Kenyan President William Ruto on Saturday convened African leaders at the ongoing COP28 talks to accelerate Africa's green industrialization.

At an event attended by leaders of Angola, Burundi, Djibouti, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia as well as COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the Africa Green Industrialization Initiative was launched.

The initiative aims to accelerate and scale green industries and businesses across Africa, promote climate mitigation and adaptation, and stimulate economic green growth on the continent.

In his remarks, Ruto said that "the initiative marks a concrete step toward the realization of the Nairobi Declaration, activating private sector-led scaling-up of green industrial clusters."

African leaders embraced the initiative as the pathway for their nations' development. They also discussed plans to activate end-to-end socioeconomic transformation through the rapid growth of green industrial clusters, the strong role of regional and global export markets for value-added green products and technologies, crucial for global clean energy value chain.

Attendees at the event also stressed that Africa's green industrialization was critical for the achievement of the world's collective climate ambitions.

Leaders or senior representatives from over 100 countries are gathering here on Friday and Saturday for the World Climate Action Summit, which is being held during the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28.