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Low-carbon Africa: leapfrogging to a green future Policy recommendations
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‘In addressing climate resilience, we need to develop
renewable energy. Africa can leapfrog the rest of the
world and adopt the latest, most efficient renewable
energy technologies’
Jamal Saghir, Sustainable Development Director for the Africa
World Bank, speaking at an African Energy Ministers’ meeting in
Johannesburg, September 2011
The fossil-fuel-based economy is not delivering the
economic potential of sub-Saharan Africa. There is very
poor energy security in the region, with instability in both
the supply and the price of fossil fuels, and a huge draw
on foreign export earnings to deliver energy demands.
Conventional fuels are not delivering energy for the poor or
meeting global climate change objectives.
This report has demonstrated that there is another option for
sub-Saharan African countries. This is an economic pathway
based on local, sustainable renewable energy, and energy
efficiency. With the right international support and national
policies to deliver this alternative, Africa could improve its
energy delivery to reduce energy poverty and realise its
economic ambition.
3.1 Challenges for African countries to
achieving a big low-carbon transition
A transition to low-carbon energy will require political
will from within countries and practical measures to lay a
foundation to accept such a transformation. States such as
South Africa and Nigeria, which have economies based on
fossil-fuel exploitation, will need to question their current
economic model’s ability to deliver a sustainable and
prosperous future for their people.
At national levels there are barriers to expanding lowcarbon
energy. Bureaucratic delay, poor institutions, unclear
regulations and poor transport infrastructure are just some
of the issues resulting in higher transaction costs for energy
projects in sub-Saharan Africa than for the rest of the
developing world. 124
Limited technical expertise in operating and maintaining
technology further heightens costs for investors. One
potential option to mitigate these high costs would be
to invest in research and development, with the aim of
reducing the need for and associated cost of importing
technical expertise from abroad.
Infrastructural investment is also a crucial component
in structural transformation and export diversification
in Africa’s energy sector. 125 Investment in infrastructure
attracts private investment, increases profits from private
investment and creates an environment that enables trade
to emerge. 126
It will be essential to have a policy, regulator and an
institutional environment that can nurture private sector
delivery and market development. Creating economies
of scale is likely to play an important role in technologycentred
energy investment, to make the technologies more
competitive and to drive delivery chains across the region.
In particular this is important when competing with cheap
imported technology from China. This will require support
and nurturing a technology manufacturing base, from smallscale
cook stoves to new innovations in solar and wind
technology.
Getting the national policy, regulation and investment
framework right; actions to increase the national
capacity to deliver new technology approaches and
to encourage private sector involvement; and the
political will to make it happen will all support a green
economic future for Africa.
3.2 Leapfrog fund – a fair share of
mitigation finance for African people
An international, science-based, and equitable climate
change agreement is needed along the lines agreed in the
Bali Roadmap of the UNFCCC. Christian Aid believes such
an agreement must be in keeping with the 1.5°C emergency
climate stabilisation programme. The agreement must
confront the twin problems of energy poverty and climate
change facing poor nations.
Given that Africa is already suffering the impacts of climate
change to a degree that is out of all proportion to its
historical contribution to or economic capacity to meet the
climate problem, it is due assistance for both adaptation and
mitigation. Accordingly, Africa and developing countries in
other regions must continue to fight for sufficient financial
and technological transfers that are new, additional to
overseas development assistance, adequate and predictable
from developed countries to address the unavoidable impact
of climate change and enable an effective transition to a
low-carbon development pathway.