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The credibility of Europe’s strategy to a inexperienced financial transition overseas will rely on its means to assist create and maintain inexperienced industrialisation in African international locations, making African international locations not simply targets of European coverage, however key actors of a brand new and interconnected inexperienced financial system.
Africa-Europe discussions on local weather and power are overshadowed by the inherent injustice of worldwide local weather motion and the dangers that an accelerated European transition can entail for African international locations.
This isn’t in any respect shocking. Africa has barely contributed to world CO2 emissions, is disproportionately affected by local weather danger, and is now beneath stress to forego fossil-fuel powered development.
The historic local weather injustice will not be a debate the EU can win.
The EU’s response has been a gradual, if hesitant, growth of its just-transition narrative past Europe. The thought of prioritising and concentrating investments in these international locations that will likely be most affected by phasing-out fossil fuels was initially reserved for addressing Europe’s personal coal-dependent areas and its direct neighbourhood.
The Simply Power Transition Partnership with South Africa on the Glasgow COP26 convention prolonged this to Africa’s greatest coal-dependent financial system.
The AU-EU summit in February took this idea even additional, asserting plans for inexperienced partnerships modelled on the South African one throughout the continent, together with in international locations with very completely different power mixes like Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.
Whereas these are necessary steps (no less than on paper), there are nonetheless vital divergences. The problem of any simply transition in Africa is much less a matter of phasing out soiled coal, and far more a matter of making certain that African economies can profit from an accelerated transition in an effort to industrialise.
That is additionally the tone of the AU’s draft local weather change and resilient growth technique, which requires seizing alternatives in low-emissions growth and inexperienced industrialisation and to place the continent to profit from a world inexperienced financial system, as a key actor, not only a goal of exogenously-determined insurance policies.
For the EU, this additionally means backing its optimistic inexperienced narrative with greater than only a scattering of inexperienced power initiatives throughout the continent. It means adopting a way more forward-looking and long-term strategy to only transition, one that’s firmly rooted within the growth and industrialisation ambitions of African international locations and societies.
Brussels vs Addis Ababa
On pure fuel particularly, African leaders and Europeans don’t see eye to eye. Merely put, the phrases “transition gas” have a unique that means in Brussels and Addis Ababa.
The EU sees it as a final resort, a strategy to keep away from dirtier coal or ageing nuclear infrastructure. African international locations, particularly these sitting on vital recently-discovered sources like Mozambique and Senegal, wish to leverage the continent’s pure fuel reserves and see pure fuel as a strategy to speed up their financial growth and industrialisation.
“On power we’ve diverging views […] We can not ask the continent to resign fossil fuels” Senegal’s president Macky Sall mentioned bluntly in February.
In the meantime, the warfare in Ukraine has sparked a stronger EU effort to wean itself off Russian fuel and diversify European provide.
EU member states are wanting in direction of present African suppliers like Algeria, Egypt, and Nigeria. Newer entrants like Tanzania are additionally expressing curiosity in supplying LNG to Europe.
But infrastructure constraints imply that African fuel is probably not a fast and simple repair for Europe’s issues. The EU can be unlikely to maneuver again into financing long-term fossil-fuel growth overseas.
The true problem is supporting viable alternate options within the brief time period.
The main target must be on showcasing alternatives in inexperienced industrialisation which leverages Africa’s clear power potential for the next worth addition in manufacturing, agricultural processing and repair industries whereas producing employment, revenues and new exports at scale.
This contains exploring the numerous alternatives for the manufacturing of inexperienced power options for native markets or exports, or EV manufacturing. It additionally contains greening present industries like constructing supplies, building, agro-food processing, in addition to a bunch of round financial system purposes.
Relating to inexperienced power, the main focus must be much less on competing with China for alternatives to put in imported know-how, however on establishing new sustainable industries and productive capacities and growing a renewables-based industrial ecosystem that may catalyse power methods reform and multiply put in capability.
Avoiding inexperienced ‘extractivism’
An African simply transition additionally requires a unique outlook on Africa’s function within the world inexperienced transition. The prospects for African inexperienced hydrogen to energy Europe’s industrial and transport transition, for instance, are creating a lot pleasure on each side, with new potential exporters like DRCongo and Namibia, becoming a member of north African international locations like Morocco.
The EU ought to resist the urge to substitute one extractive relationship with one other, and make sure that hydrogen investments are additionally used to energy native low-carbon (heavy) industries, and embrace African international locations and corporations within the growth of recent purposes from the beginning.
Equally, European demand for crucial uncooked supplies like lithium and cobalt is ready to multiply by 2050.
Whereas African international locations just like the DRC and South Africa could possibly additional increase earnings from royalties, processing at the moment largely takes place in China. This additionally dangers confining African international locations to the extraction stage of inexperienced know-how worth chains. Investments subsequently want to handle not simply Europe’s personal provide, but in addition Africa’s processing deficit and industrial growth.
All that is after all simpler mentioned than carried out. The EU is beneath stress to again its projected €150bn African funding bundle with credible plans, but the challenges transcend unlocking unseen ranges of private and non-private finance.
Sustainable industrialisation requires innovation, each technical and by way of the enterprise fashions, manufacturing and consumption patterns. African and European actors will subsequently have to develop a transparent a typical imaginative and prescient for an interconnected inexperienced financial system, and rethink provide chains to maximise mutual advantages.
That is no time for business-as-usual.
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