As Europe faces repeated, dangerous heatwaves, the question is no longer whether rich countries need climate adaptation. It is whether they are willing to learn from places that have been adapting to climate instability for decades.

Across the continent, record temperatures are straining hospitals, disrupting transport and turning ordinary public spaces into health risks. In the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the Balkans, extreme heat is only now becoming part of the social, economic and political reality of climate change.

But in Africa, communities have lived with rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, drought, water stress and fragile public infrastructure for generations. They have had to adapt under constrained conditions, often without the financing, insurance coverage or recovery systems available to wealthier countries. The continent has developed behavioural, architectural, technological and institutional approaches that offer real lessons for a rapidly warming Europe.

That is not to suggest there are silver bullets. Climate adaptation is never a matter of simple transplantation: A solution designed for Ouagadougou will need to be reshaped, tested and adjusted before it works in Marseille or Madrid. Local geography, building codes, culture and governance all matter. But the underlying approaches and the expertise behind them travel further than is often assumed.

Take architecture. Across West Africa, architects such as Francis Kere have........

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