![Over half the people in Africa still don’t have electricity access -- a major contributor to persistent poverty. Credit: Energy 4 Impact Senegal](https://static.globalissues.org/ips/2023/07/Aissata-Ba-629x377-629x377.jpeg)
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 19 (IPS) – Africa is caught within the crosshairs of local weather change. Regardless of contributing simply 3-5% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, the continent will endure local weather change’s harmful affect, together with extra extreme storms, rising temperatures and erratic rainfall within the years forward that threaten the well-being of lots of of hundreds of thousands of individuals.
Renewable vitality is a crucial a part of the answer – and Africa enjoys an unlimited potential on this regard. With among the world’s highest ranges of photo voltaic irradiance, huge expanses of land with favorable wind circumstances and highly effective rivers with immense hydroelectric potential, Africa is teeming with renewable vitality assets. Nevertheless the continent’s progress in tapping into this potential lags, leaving an enormous vitality entry problem in addition to an influence era deficit that’s stunting enterprise and different drivers of inclusive financial progress.
Because the world gears up for the twenty eighth Convention of the Events to the UN Framework Conference on Local weather Change (COP28) to be held within the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the necessity to deal with Africa’s vitality wants sustainably is all too obvious. Doing so would require rethinking the strategy and reshaping insurance policies to dramatically develop Africa’s vitality system.
It will require large and daring actions, together with huge investments in large-scale infrastructure. It would additionally require funding in info and different tender property. And, considerably, it’s going to additionally necessitate small and micro-scale grassroots initiatives that are significantly essential to make sure that native populations stay energetic individuals within the course of.
The scarcity of vitality in Africa is a urgent downside. Over half the folks in Africa nonetheless don’t have electrical energy entry — a serious contributor to persistent poverty. This hole drives households to depend on inefficient and polluting vitality sources like charcoal, wooden, and kerosene. This pervasive vitality deficit, highlighted within the ‘Tracking SDG7: The energy progress report for 2022’ has profound implications for well being, training, and sustainable growth throughout the continent.
A fair bigger portion of the inhabitants lacks entry to wash cooking applied sciences, a disaster disproportionately affecting ladies and women, and exposing them to dangerous family air air pollution that was accountable in 2019 for approximately 700,000 deaths across Africa. Reasonably than diminishing, the variety of folks with out entry is projected to doubtlessly rise from 923 milion in 2020 to 1.1 billion in 2030.
However Africa’s vitality downside extends past the dearth of entry to electrical energy and clear cooking focused by SDG#7. In too many locations throughout the continent, there’s a lack of enough and dependable electrical energy to energy companies which are the spine of Africa’s progress drive. The result’s a mixture of insufficient provide or costly turbines acquired to compensate for the inefficiencies. Basically, Africa’s potential to stimulate native entrepreneurs or entice worldwide builders and capital is just too usually being undermined by a weak electrical energy community.
The shift in focus to renewables gives a chance to alter the narrative and realities of Africa’s energy system. The massive quantities of financing being mentioned for local weather (together with within the lead-up to and at COP 28) – quantities which are inclined to exceed the degrees of funding historically mobilized for poverty alleviation – present an essential alternative for the continent.
Mobilizing funding to harness Africa’s bountiful renewable vitality wouldn’t solely assist to fulfill its present and more and more giant future vitality wants, but in addition contribute to international efforts to keep away from potential greenhouse gasoline emissions.
Furthermore, Africa’s renewables are giant sufficient to each meet home wants, and in addition assist to energy inexperienced growth overseas, together with by way of the export of green electricity to Europe and even, finally, hydrogen generated from its massive hydropower resources.
Unlocking Africa’s renewable potential would require supportive insurance policies, sturdy rules, technological innovation, and substantial funding. Sturdy, sound and predictable regulatory frameworks and establishments are key.
Higher info can be key. For instance, the African Energy Commission has established the Strategic Framework on the African Bioenergy Data Management that seeks to lift consciousness of the potential of the bioenergy sector, reflecting the specificities of the truth on the bottom within the area.
Given Africa’s restricted monetary useful resource base, any resolution requires reaching past Africa’s borders. Rich nations can convey capital, experience, and tailored applied sciences to the continent. South-South cooperation can encourage peer studying, the dissemination of technological options tailored to native weather conditions and the growing nation financial context, and assist the deployment of the rising monetary capacities of rising economies to assist Africa’s renewables.
Multilateral growth banks, growth finance establishments, export credit score companies and personal capital must also all do extra.
The internet hosting of COP28 within the UAE gives a chance to mobilize funding for Africa from a broader set of actors and international locations, transferring past the standard North/South divide. Actually, local weather finance has been identified by the COP28 host as one of many key objectives of this COP. As COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber mentioned finally month’s climate finance summit held in Paris, “For countries that have done the least to cause climate change, climate finance remains unaccessible, unavailable and unaffordable….” Can COP 28, with UAE management, ship for Africa on this potential?
One UAE initiative – the Zayed Sustainability Prize – has already helped promote native motion in addressing these challenges. (One of many authors is a member of the Choice Committee for the Prize.) Through the years, the Zayed Sustainability Prize has supported sustainable change world wide by recognising and rewarding progressive and impactful organizations working to beat growth boundaries, together with restricted entry to dependable energy, clear water, high quality healthcare, and wholesome meals.
For instance, M-KOPA, which gained within the Vitality class in 2015, makes use of digital expertise to assist its clients make micropayments in direction of important services and products, reminiscent of smartphones, fridges, photo voltaic panels, even financial institution loans and medical insurance. Final month, it closed US $250 million in new funding to broaden its fintech companies to underbanked customers in Kenya, Nigeria, and extra just lately, Ghana.
One other winner was the Starehe Ladies Centre which empowers deprived women by offering them entry to high quality training. The college gained the Prize in 2017 within the International Excessive Faculties class in recognition of its efforts to scale back its utility payments by way of the set up of photo voltaic panels and extra environment friendly lighting. These monetary financial savings have allowed it to confess extra women from deprived backgrounds.
Producing native motion is a important enter to make sure that huge funding applications translate right into a simply transition for households. To this finish, large-scale infrastructure should be accompanied by people-centric applications.
Africa’s renewable vitality potential might each assist drive huge financial progress within the area whereas additionally serving to the world deal with the problem of local weather change. The potential is there, and it’ll require motion … in methods large and small.
(Article first published in Nation (Kenya edition) on July 3, 2023)
Philippe Benoit is analysis director for Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050. He beforehand held administration positions on the World Financial institution and the Worldwide Vitality Company and has over 20 years of expertise engaged on Africa.
David Sandalow is Inaugural Fellow on the Heart on International Vitality Coverage, Columbia College, and a member of the Choice Committee of the Zayed Sustainability Prize.
© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service