"Africa is paying a heavy price over the climate issue and is without doubt the continent worst affected," Morocco's King Mohammed VI told the summit attended by 20 African leaders.

"These disruptions... Greatly hamper Africa's development and gravely threaten the basic rights of tens of millions of Africans," he said.

He said the continent needed to "speak in a single voice, demand climate justice".

France's President Francois Hollande and UN chief Ban Ki-moon also attended the summit which took place alongside the COP22 climate change conference in Marrakesh.

Ban said Africa was at the forefront of the fight against climate change, and that 36 of the 50 countries most affected by global warming were African.

Senegal's President MackySall said African countries would wait until 2020 for promised aid from developed countries to fight global warming.

An agreement after last year's climate talks in Paris provides for a green fund of $100 billion (90 billion euros) per year from 2020 to help poorer nations make the shift to clean energy.

Hollande said today's summit would "lay the foundations" for the plan to help Africa from 2020.

"France has made its commitments and will keep them, I will see to it," he said.

African leaders have called for more funding from developed nations to cut fossil fuel emissions and take contingency measures.

"Developed countries must shoulder their historical responsibility for emissions," Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh said yesterday.

The UN, too, has called for more money, especially for "adaptation" -- shoring up defences against the effects of global warming.

This could mean building dykes or elevating homes as protection against rising seas, improving weather warning systems and growing climate change-resistant crops.

President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and genocide during the 13-year-old conflict in Darfur, also attended.

He has always denied the charges.

The summit comes amid growing opposition to the ICC among African leaders, who accuse the court of prosecuting alleged crimes in Africa while ignoring those elsewhere in the world.