In Africa, countries are still striving to guarantee energy access for all and grow their economies, but with the climate crisis — from which the continent suffers the most adverse effects — it is imperative that the world transitions to cleaner energy. But in conditions of abject poverty where girls and women tend to be the most impoverished, how can African nations prioritise building costly clean energy infrastructure without compromising their economic development agendas?
As a middle-income country, South Africa has one of the most well-developed electricity networks in sub-Saharan Africa, with 95 percent of its population having access to electricity and 85 percent having access to clean cooking in 2018. Their coal sector also employed 92,230 people in 2019 and the resource meets 77 percent of the energy needs in South Africa. According to South Africa’s mineral resources and energy department, their energy sources are “unlikely to change significantly in the next two decades owing to the relative lack of suitable alternatives to coal as an energy source.”
But this dependence has had consequences for mining-affected communities, particularly on women. Since women are generally responsible for growing food and gathering water, they are the first to see how pollution from mining affect food security and are the ones who bear the responsibility for finding drinkable water.
An $8.5 billion deal was announced at the COP26 climate summit whereby wealthy western states would help South Africa “wean off coal power,” to reduce its emissions and become more climate-resilient. There are fears that transitioning to clean energy sources will cost of tens of thousands of jobs in the country, but a poor response to the climate emergency is will only exacerbate existing social inequalities. For just energy transition to take place, the deal will need to support the communities that depended on coal for their livelihoods and help in the development of green jobs.
But while South Africa has been able to provide energy access to most of its population, sub-Saharan nations are struggling to provide universal electricity access; 72 percent of people without electricity in the world are living in sub-Saharan Africa. With population growth and rapid urbanisation, the pressures for energy will continue to increase and its provision is central to poverty reduction and industrialisation strategies.
Largely agrarian, African countries are said to be low-carbon and contribute only 4.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. But because of widespread poverty, the continent is also the most adversely affected by the climate emergency and the least resilient. The challenge in the coming years will be to achieve “quick” development — for example, providing universal and reliable access to energy, which has consequences not only for household consumption, but for the functioning of hospitals, schools, and industries — while fighting the climate emergency.
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Fighting poverty and climate change
In an interview with BBC World Service’s Africa Daily, environmental journalist Ugochi Nyaka-Oluigbo talks about the issues of poverty when confronted with climate change. “It’s a problem trying to convince people that the environment matters when there are other issues, according to them, that are more important to them,” she explains. You can’t tell them ‘Oh you have to find an alternative to firewood; you can’t cut trees’ even though the government hasn’t provided good enough alternatives for them.”
In the face of abject poverty, an argument that has often come to light is that developing countries should have the same opportunities to develop and enjoy the same social wellbeing as people in the west. “Africa’s development is non-negotiable,” says Kenyan engineer and energy researcher Rose Mutiso, and development is a process that requires energy.
Without power, we limit people’s ability to improve their own lives because electricity allows us to make work more efficient, or to refrigerate and preserve food and medicine. For women, energy access makes the difference between spending time pursuing things like education as opposed to spending hours retrieving firewood to be able to cook. It also makes the difference for productivity in all industries. In the farming sector, access to energy would allow for irrigation systems to be set up, and for crops to be stored in refrigerated areas so that they do not spoil.
Rich countries today have, over centuries, enjoyed the explosive growth that came through burning fossil fuels, and this contributed massively to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Developing countries are being confronted with having to develop their countries through increasing pressures to divest from fossil fuels because of the climate crisis.
To maintain global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, over 40 countries committed to ending their use of coal as they phase out the use of fossil fuels at COP26. Funding for energy is increasingly being limited to building renewable energy infrastructures. But sub-Saharan countries whose energy use does not compare to that of the largest emitters, both presently and historically because of energy-poverty, cannot have the same responses to climate change.
“Keeping Africans in poverty is not a climate strategy,” Mutiso says. Poor energy access continues to hinder economic growth and development on the continent and the one-size-fits-all solution of net-zero emissions could exacerbate energy poverty. So, while investment should be prioritised in the renewable sector, many argue that flexibility in the short term and fossil fuels should be part of Africa’s climate change adaptation strategy because it can ensure long-term sustainable growth and long-term financing for energy projects.
Becoming more resilient to extreme weather events that are increasingly threatening food security, creating climate refugees, and threatening livelihoods — consider for example how rising water temperatures affect the supply of fish and the fisheries industry — requires pulling people out of poverty and providing them with technologies to weather and survive climate impacts.
For low-income countries to be able to invest in homes that will not be swept away by landslides, or in irrigation systems that will protect crops from the worst droughts, and powering hospitals, while remaining within the global temperature boundary, Africa and other developing countries should be prioritised in the carbon budget. That is, the remaining quota of carbon that can be safely emitted into the atmosphere should be allocated to low-income countries so that they can meet their development goals alongside building renewable infrastructures, while countries that bear the responsibility for climate change focus on cutting their emissions.
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Moving towards a green, African industrial revolution
With the abundance of natural resources necessary to build and fuel the infrastructure, renewable energy is said to be economically viable for Africa and the continent well postured to transition into clean energy. Some countries have already shown how their energy has been fuelled by renewables alongside coal and natural gas. Kenya, for example, has made significant investments in renewable energy grids and most of its electricity is already powered by renewables.
But even solar power, with its mass potential on the continent, remains mostly untapped because of the costs of installation, something that average African households, particularly those in the most remote areas cannot afford. Renewable energy is becoming increasingly competitive in its costs but still, the International Energy Agency estimates that a yearly $120 billion would be required to achieve a reliable and universal energy supply (via diverse energy mixes) for Africans by 2040.
Providing universal energy access will require a financial commitment from richer countries to invest in the “greenest” industrial revolution. These commitments, some have argued, must also come in the form of grants rather than loans and there must be debt restructuring so that low-income countries can invest the debt they owe on building up the state.
But certainly, any strategy towards greening must ensure that there is economic growth and poverty reduction. The climate crisis is as much about saving the planet as it is about equity. Inequitable and inadequate climate action could force a further 100 million people into extreme poverty, the bulk of whom will be in sub-Saharan Africa. Being forced to pick some energy sources over others could be a setback for energy access and thus economic development.
Just transition requires a deep understanding of the needs of African nations and people and must be more than a buzzword at COP26 if Africa is to transition alongside the rest of the world into clean energy, and if it is to shield itself from the worst impacts of climate change.