Africa: “Poverty and climate, the same fight”

It’s not just Europe that needs to change gears because of the energy crisis exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rising global oil and gas prices are also hurting communities and businesses across Africa. Energy poverty, which is already at high levels on the continent – almost 600 million people do not have access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa – will worsen further. This will have repercussions in the daily lives of Africans, leading to health problems, lack of education and degradation of livelihoods.

On top of all this, Africa is being hit hard by a global food crisis caused by the conjunction of four successive years of drought in the region and war in Ukraine, which is starving millions of people. The resulting instability is pushing many African countries to the brink. Everything indicates that these two problems will persist in 2023 and beyond.

Read alsoIn Africa, the ravages of hunger in the light of shortages

The opportunity of the electric transition

Seeing African countries battered by fluctuating fossil fuel prices is not a new phenomenon, however. In Côte d’Ivoire, a country heavily dependent on gas for its electricity production, the increase in the price of electricity in 2016 sparked violent protests. When the poorest communities depend on raw materials whose prices are so volatile, they are the ones who are ultimately the hardest hit. In response, some African leaders are now encouraging their fellow citizens to switch to electricity. Policies such as the transition to electric vehicles are offered as solutions to reduce the continent’s vulnerability to oil price increases.

Although electricity networks and charging infrastructure are still very far from what they should be to support this transition, calls to switch to clean technologies will increase in the wake of this energy crisis. But the main potential for real transformation lies in renewable energies. Solar and wind are and will continue to be less expensive than electricity generated from gas – and their prices are less volatile.

Read alsoEnergy security and the rise of renewables: the perilous equation of 2023

Voices are increasingly being raised, including within the International Energy Agency (IEA), to increase investment in renewable energies in Africa in order to protect the continent against the brutal price variations caused by the current energy crisis – and by those that the future holds. The same logic applies worldwide, but in Africa it is even more important to heed these calls in order to tackle the high levels of energy poverty observed there. Renewable energy is best placed to help achieve this goal. Renewable energy sources installed close to where they are used in rural areas of Africa have been found to be more economically viable than building long-distance power lines carrying electricity from gas-fired power plants ( which, in any case, are not sustainable in the long term).

In fact, the development of renewable energies is the essential step that Africa must take to have a chance of benefiting from a stable climate. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the development of any new infrastructure using fossil fuels “moral and economic folly”. Despite all this, Africa has received only 2% of investments in renewables, even though the continent has 39% of the world’s potential for these energies.

A massive need for investment

African countries need massive public and private investments from the wealthy countries of the North in order to finance the expansion of renewable capacities. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that until 2030 Africa will need $70 billion in investment each year to ensure access to clean energy across the continent.

In September 2022, I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya with Unicef ​​to meet communities suffering from the terrible drought there. As people face extremely brutal weather conditions, they also have to deal with the same food and energy price hikes as anywhere else in the world. The influence of the climate crisis is evident in this overlapping of events. And the world’s poorest, those with fewer resources, are the hardest hit. However, they are also those who have contributed the least to climate change. In a report dated June 2022, the IEA notes that “Africa is only responsible for 3% of global CO2 emissions to date.₂ related to energy production.

The demand for clean energy solutions that can contribute to development and help these communities become more resilient to repeated crises without producing more carbon emissions will only increase. Governments, development banks and private institutions in the countries of the North (whose activity has been fueled by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, much of which came from Africa) must now respond to these calls. to investment.

The point of view of Vanessa Nakate, climate activist, for The Economist