Another day, another summit, and another round of expensive suits in Addis Ababa talking about “climate-resilient value chains.” President Ruto is back at it, cozying up to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) like it’s a long-lost relative with a heavy inheritance. We’re told this partnership is about “equipping farmers with technology,” but if you walk into any market in Nairobi, the only thing the farmers are equipped with is a look of pure desperation as the price of fertilizer and fuel continues to choke the life out of their margins.

The jargon is always top-tier. “Low-carbon development” and “financially sustainable agricultural value chains” sound great in a boardroom, but they don’t put unga on the table. The GCF has supposedly approved over $16 billion globally, yet the average Kenyan farmer is still praying for rain that refuses to fall or watching their crops rot because the roads to the market are non-existent. It’s the same old story: we’re masters at securing the “funding,” but somehow, the “implementation” always gets lost in the mail.

This entire Addis affair smells like the same brand of optimism we saw with the KSh 100 Billion tarmac projects in the North. As I’ve said before in Tarmac You Can’t Eat: The KSh 100 Billion Mirage in the North, you can’t feed a family on a paved road, and you certainly can’t feed them on a “climate-smart” white paper. We are great at building monuments to “progress” that leave the actual people behind, starving in the shadow of a new solar panel or a freshly paved highway that leads to nowhere.

The Lake Region Economic Bloc is the latest target for these GCF-backed dreams, promising to revolutionize dairy, coffee, and poultry. It sounds like a lovely brunch menu, doesn’t it? But for the smallholder farmers, especially the women mentioned in the fluff pieces, these projects usually manifest as a three-day workshop in a fancy hotel for “stakeholders” and a couple of branded t-shirts. Meanwhile, the actual cost of keeping a cow alive or processing tea remains a nightmare that no amount of “concessional funding” seems to fix.

Ruto is now framing climate action as an “economic opportunity” for job creation. It’s a clever pivot. If you can’t fix the current economy, just invent a “green” one and hope nobody notices the transition is funded by debt and more promises. While the African Union leaders demand “faster and fairer” flows of cash, the Kenyan taxpayer is left wondering why the only thing “resilient” in this country is the government’s ability to fly to a new summit every week while the local economy is on life support.

At the end of the day, “climate-smart” is just the new “digital.” It’s a buzzword used to unlock international bank accounts while the locals are told to tighten their belts for the sake of the planet. We are being sold a future where we are “green” and “low-carbon,” but if we can’t afford to eat, we’ll just be a very eco-friendly graveyard. Expect a “tumultuous week” indeed, because while they talk about 2027 and global architectures, the rest of us are just trying to survive until Monday.