Ensure Africa energy poverty is addressed

It has been estimated that Africa needs north of $500 billion in adaptation finance over a 10-year stretch (2020 to 2030) to get ahead of the climate disasters curve. African delegates at the ongoing Africa Climate Summit in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have, with less prompting, expressed their willingness to pull their oars if the global north ever makes good on its promise to arrange lifeboats. Since promising to extend $100 billion annually in climate finance to developing economies like Uganda back in 2009, the global north has only succeeded in providing a lot of hot air but no liftoff.

Amidst all this, one question recurs with awful inevitability: where will the money widely expected to wean Africa off dirty fossil fuels come from? At the sizeable risk of sounding like a broken record, we join others in asking the question. We are not in doubt that the inaugural climate summit in Africa will fall way short of providing an answer with military precision.

Such lack of clarity of thought is not without consequences. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has previously warned that sub-Saharan Africa could significantly whittle down its gross domestic product (GDP) if inaction continues to hold sway. The United Nations body that interests itself in the science revolving around climate change estimates that sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP will plunge by 12 percent in 2050 and 80 percent in 2100 if its adaptation capacity is not reified to confront high carbon emissions.

Needless to say, then, the question of how to sustain support for climate adaptation in Africa ought to occupy a disproportionate part of conversations at the climate summit in Nairobi this week. There has to be a meeting of minds over how a move away from dirty fossil fuels will look like.

The energy poverty that is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa complicates things as recently witnessed in Uganda. When President Museveni issued an executive order banning charcoal burning and charcoal business in northern and eastern Uganda in mid-May, a number of Ugandans were condemned to the jaws of energy poverty.

It did not help matters that alternatives (i.e. clean energy) continue to come with prohibitive price tags. Charcoal remains the devil Uganda households know even as the latest consumer price index captures a 5.7 percent hike in retail prices.

To transition from such a fossil fuel-based economy to a model with a gargantuan appetite for renewables, adaptation investments will take on added significance. Africa, which emits the least amount of carbon and yet bears the brunt—more than elsewhere—of the climate crisis, has every right to keep its anger at the global north scorching.

The continent feels shortchanged being talked out of turning to the dirty fossil fuels that anchored the industrialisation of the global north. This cannot be wished away. To ensure that the domestic agendas of players in the global south are aligned with green-led climate targets, financing around climate adaptation has to be much more than empty rhetoric.

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Ensure Africa energy poverty is addressed

The issue: Climate finance

Our view: To ensure that the domestic agendas of players in the global south are aligned with green-led climate targets, financing around climate adaptation has to be much more than empty rhetoric.

It has been estimated that Africa needs north of $500 billion in adaptation finance over a 10-year stretch (2020 to 2030) to get ahead of the climate disasters curve. African delegates at the ongoing Africa Climate Summit in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have, with less prompting, expressed their willingness to pull their oars if the global north ever makes good on its promise to arrange lifeboats. Since promising to extend $100 billion annually in climate finance to developing economies like Uganda back in 2009, the global north has only succeeded in providing a lot of hot air but no liftoff.

Amidst all this, one question recurs with awful inevitability: where will the money widely expected to wean Africa off dirty fossil fuels come from? At the sizeable risk of sounding like a broken record, we join others in asking the question. We are not in doubt that the inaugural climate summit in Africa will fall way short of providing an answer with military precision.

Such lack of clarity of thought is not without consequences. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has previously warned that sub-Saharan Africa could significantly whittle down its gross domestic product (GDP) if inaction continues to hold sway. The United Nations body that interests itself in the science revolving around climate change estimates that sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP will plunge by 12 percent in 2050 and 80 percent in 2100 if its adaptation capacity is not reified to confront high carbon emissions.

Needless to say, then, the question of how to sustain support for climate adaptation in Africa ought to occupy a disproportionate part of conversations at the climate summit in Nairobi this week. There has to be a meeting of minds over how a move away from dirty fossil fuels will look like.

The energy poverty that is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa complicates things as recently witnessed in Uganda. When President Museveni issued an executive order banning charcoal burning and charcoal business in northern and eastern Uganda in mid-May, a number of Ugandans were condemned to the jaws of energy poverty.

It did not help matters that alternatives (i.e. clean energy) continue to come with prohibitive price tags. Charcoal remains the devil Uganda households know even as the latest consumer price index captures a 5.7 percent hike in retail prices.

To transition from such a fossil fuel-based economy to a model with a gargantuan appetite for renewables, adaptation investments will take on added significance. Africa, which emits the least amount of carbon and yet bears the brunt—more than elsewhere—of the climate crisis, has every right to keep its anger at the global north scorching.

The continent feels shortchanged being talked out of turning to the dirty fossil fuels that anchored the industrialisation of the global north. This cannot be wished away. To ensure that the domestic agendas of players in the global south are aligned with green-led climate targets, financing around climate adaptation has to be much more than empty rhetoric.

Our commitment to you

We pledge:

• To be accurate and fair in all we do.
• To be respectful to all in our pursuit of the truth.
• To refuse to accept any compensation beyond that provided by Monitor Publications Ltd. for what we do in our news gathering and decision-making.

Further, we ask that we be informed whenever you feel that we have fallen short in our attempt to keep these commitments.