Hopes were running high in Nairobi, Kenya, this week as African leaders gathered for an inaugural climate summit designed to urgently kick-start the continent’s transition to clean energy.
The summit, which included leaders from Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, the U.S. and the E.U., tried to create a “new narrative” around Africa, according to James Irungu Mwangi, a Kenyan entrepreneur who helped organize the event.
“If you think about the attributes and the assets that we’re going to need in order to survive and thrive this century, Africa is uniquely well endowed,” he told me. “Investing in Africa and climate positive growth is one of the best chances the world has of getting anywhere close to the Paris goals.”
With its abundant sunlight, natural resources and undeveloped land, Africa has 60 percent of the world’s solar energy potential and almost a third of the minerals that will be needed to electrify transportation and the power grid.
But much of that potential is untapped. Africa produces just a sliver of its electricity with renewable technologies such as wind and solar.
Climate change is expected to take a deadly toll on the vulnerable countries that have produced only a tiny fraction of the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. And 600 million people in Africa, or about 43 percent of the continent’s population, have little or no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.
These are among the many reasons that the world’s industrialized countries, which are largely responsible for the pollution that is causing climate change, need to invest in Africa’s renewable energy transition, Mwangi said.
As the world seeks to limit additional global warming, powering Africa with renewables rather than fossil fuels is an easy way to avoid new emissions. “The cheapest fossil fuel infrastructure to shut down is the one you haven’t built yet,” he said. “The cheapest agricultural system to clean up is the one that was regenerative from the start.”
If Africa can build its clean power infrastructure from the ground up, it will be cleaner to operate energy-intensive industries like manufacturing on the continent, Mwangi added. And with much of Africa’s wilderness still intact, the continent is also primed to be a leader in carbon removal.
None of these opportunities, he stressed, are predicated on charity.
“It’s in the world’s interest to invest in helping Africa access green technology,” he said. “This is just about the cheapest way to decarbonize heavy industry and do more of it where the labor is, where the raw materials are and where the renewable energy is.”
Starving for investment
It won’t be easy. As my colleague Max Bearak reported from the summit, clean energy projects are booming almost everywhere in the world — except in Africa.
That’s because the global financial system, including governments and the private sector, generally consider investing in Africa to be too risky. The continent receives just 2 percent of renewable energy investments around the world, and most of that goes to just a few countries with more developed economies, like Egypt, Morocco and South Africa.
“The multinational banks are the ones who need to be the mobilizers in chief,” one expert told Max. “They’ve made promises to reform, but they are not following through fast enough.”
European and American leaders attending the summit said they wanted that to change. “We are not only interested in extracting resources,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in Nairobi. “We want to partner with you to create local value chains, to create good jobs here in Africa.”
But good intentions won’t be enough to overcome the challenges, which include high interest rates, massive government debt loads and persistent concerns about economic mismanagement, corruption and conflict. Such risks have kept many big companies and lenders on the sidelines.
“The tension at the heart of this summit is that Africa wants to forge its own way,” Max told me. “But they just don’t have the capital. The countries can’t build their economies without help.”
A road map for change
There were some signs of progress at the summit.
Investors said they planned to spend about $23 billion on solar-powered microgrids, carbon markets and reforestation, though “it was unclear how much of that money represented commitments, as opposed to intentions,” Max reported.
Pending reforms at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund could unlock huge sums of money for developing countries at below-market interest rates and with more lenient timelines for repayment. Such loans could also help attract more private capital to climate projects.
But similar promises have so far not panned out. Wealthy countries have pledged $100 billion in climate-related financing to the world’s least-developed nations, but have failed to follow through on their commitments.
The clock is ticking. Africa will soon have more than two billion people, and without a rapid shift to clean energy, its booming population could produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases.
“We must go green fast, before industrializing,” Kenya’s president, William Ruto, said at the summit, “and not vice versa.”
Climate Forward, live onstage
On Sept. 21, The Times will bring together newsmakers, innovators, activists and scientists for an all-day event examining the actions needed to confront climate change.
A livestream will be available for Times subscribers. Click here to register.
Speakers will include:
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Bill Gates, founder of Breakthrough Energy and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank Group
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Al Gore, former vice president of the U.S.
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Marie Kondo, tidying expert and founder of KonMari
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Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies
I’ll be moderating many of the sessions, along with colleagues including Somini Sengupta and Kim Severson. I hope to see you all there!
Other climate news
The weather report
Hurricane Lee has grabbed the attention of social media because of the chance that it might hit the U.S. East Coast. But at the moment, that remains only a possibility.
As of 11 a.m. Thursday, Hurricane Lee was about 870 miles east of the Leeward Islands, moving west-northwest at 15 miles per hour. Its maximum sustained winds of 105 m.p.h. make it a Category 2 hurricane. Dangerous surf conditions generated by the storm will likely affect the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Bahamas and Bermuda over the weekend.
There is a chance Lee could hit the East Coast, but that is currently not the most likely outcome. It might also hit Canada, or stay farther east and move across Bermuda. Click here for more details.
— Judson Jones
