African leaders present unified position on a just energy transition

African leaders from 11 countries presented a bloc position on what a fair, clean energy transition would look like on the continent in the lead-up to the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference set for November in Egypt. “We believe that as a bloc we are stronger,” said Patricie Uwase, minister of state in Rwanda’s Ministry of Infrastructure, during the Sustainable Energy for All Forum when discussing the outcomes of private ministerial roundtables that occurred this week. Within that discussion, there was an emphasis on the need for a “just” transition, she said, where the burden of nations working to meet Paris Agreement targets doesn’t conflict too heavily with other development goals that African countries want to achieve but are dependent on energy consumption. The continent’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is negligible. Around the world, 759 million people live without access to electricity and most of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. The African roundtable of ministers, senior officials, and other partners, which represented Ghana, Morocco, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Egypt, “agreed on the importance of articulating a collective position as a bloc of African countries on the just and equitable energy transition.” According to Uwase, this included the following set of principles: • Making modern, sustainable energy available to the entire continent. • Support of African nations in the development of the gas sector as a transition fuel, which they would eventually displace with renewable energy and green hydrogen for industrial development if this is a financially and technically sustainable option. • African nations will pursue an energy goal of at least 1,000-kilowatt hours per capita consumption. • African nations will prioritize a revolution in clean cooking. • They called for a scale-up of public and private sector investments of over $2 trillion in new generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure, and new energy technologies and delivery systems. • The creation of millions of jobs in the sustainable energy sector. • Lift development finance restrictions and ramp up domestic resource mobilization. • Encourage technology transfers to ensure nations across the continent have access to the latest innovations in energy on fair terms. “We see this as an important moment to begin to build the African bloc's position, we can really go far together,” she said. They plan to publish a communique on their bloc position. A smaller group of Asian countries gathered as well, but are not planning to issue a communique. This includes senior officials and ministers from Bangladesh, Fiji, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, as well as representatives from the Asian Development Bank, HSBC India, Deutsche Bank, the Global Wind Energy Council, and The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet. Asian leaders said during these roundtable meetings that huge strides have been made toward electrification, but “last mile” connectivity and reliability are still a significant challenge, according to Ajay Mathur, director general at the International Solar Alliance, who reported on the roundtable discussions. Clean cooking efforts need more financing with an approach that is innovative and has a social equity model. Success stories in the region have led to private investment and have come from “huge amounts of political effort” to enable transparency, lowering of costs, and payment to the private sector, Mathur said. “Governments and the development finance institutions played an important role in crowding in the private capital that helped this happen. Consequently, blended finance options were seen across the region as a very successful way to bring in capital, as well as de-risk, the kinds of challenges that both the investors and the users saw,” Mathur said. African and Asian ministers also met to discuss cooperation between the two continents. “South-South partnerships emerged as a major way in which countries have learned from each other and influenced their own policies,” Mathur said. While 17 countries from both continents participated in the ministerial meetings, there is a need to add more countries to these discussions before COP 27, said Paul Walton, executive director at the Africa-Europe Foundation.