Chethana Janith, Jadetimes Staff
C. Janith is a Jadetimes news reporter covering science and geopolitics.
Africa is home to a growing pipeline of innovative new programs designed to tap the continent's abundant renewable energy sources and provide universal access to electricity and clean-cooking technologies. But a little help from the world's largest economies will be needed to realize these initiatives' potential.
The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku (COP29) and G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro were a watershed, particularly for developing countries. It was heartening to see the African Union join the discussions in Rio as the G20’s latest official member. And now South Africa has assumed the group’s rotating presidency.
Attending the Rio talks at the invitation of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, I stressed the importance of achieving a just energy transition in my own country and across Sub-Saharan Africa. From Dar es Salaam and Pretoria to Baku and Rio, energy has been a major topic of discussion in global fora because it is absolutely central to both economic development and climate-mitigation efforts. In Sub-Saharan Africa, around 600 million people (almost half the population) lack access to electricity, and nearly a billion people (one-eighth of the global population) lack access to clean cooking.
Fortunately, several major new programs promise to help close these technology gaps. For example, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank have launched the Mission 300 project, which aims to connect at least 300 million people to clean electricity in Africa by 2030. In January 2025, Dar es Salaam will host the Heads-of-State Energy Summit for Mission 300, bringing together government leaders, multilateral development banks, private investors, and others. African countries will present their plans to mobilize investments in grid and off-grid solutions using readily available and affordable energy sources.
According to the World Bank, reaching the project’s electrification target will require $30 billion of public-sector investment, much of which could come from its own concessional financing arm, the International Development Association. Since G20 member states are the biggest contributors to the IDA, we are asking them to support our mission with robust successive IDA replenishment cycles.
Another major program is Tanzania’s own $18 billion plan to catalyze renewable energy investments in 12 southern African countries that are interconnected by the same pool of geothermal, hydro, solar, and wind sources. The goal is to increase electricity generation from these sources by 8.4 gigawatts, which is in keeping with the COP28 (Dubai) pledge to triple the world’s renewable energy generation capacity by 2030.
More broadly, African leaders have also set a target (at last year’s Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi) to increase the continent’s renewable-energy generation to 300 GW by 2030 – up from just 56 GW in 2022. This will require an estimated $600 billion, a tenfold increase from current investment levels.
Connecting a rapidly growing and urbanizing population to clean power is obviously beneficial for the continent. But it also benefits the world, given the potential to avoid gigatons of additional carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, Africa’s success in this respect is crucial to meeting the Paris climate agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Our continent is richly endowed with huge reserves of critical minerals and almost endless solar and wind power potential, but must overcome scarce (and expensive) capital flows to make the most of these resources.
A third important initiative is the African Women Clean Cooking Support Program, which I spearheaded at COP28 to achieve universal access to clean cooking technologies in Tanzania and across Africa. With more than 900 million Africans still dependent on wood and charcoal for cooking, toxic indoor smoke is the second leading cause of premature deaths on the continent – a problem predominantly affecting women and children.
This is totally unacceptable, which is why I went to Rio to call for the inclusion of a $12 billion facility in the AfDB’s African Development Fund replenishment, to drive universal access to clean cooking across Africa. The AfDB has pledged $2 billion for clean cooking over the next ten years, and at this year’s Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa other partners promised to mobilize an additional $2.2 billion by 2030. But as encouraging as these commitments are, they are not enough. The International Energy Agency estimates that achieving universal access to clean cooking in Africa will cost $4 billion per year through 2030. Complementary support from other global players is needed.
Such investments would yield far-reaching returns. In addition to reducing premature deaths from indoor pollution, replacing dirty fuels globally will save at least 200 million hectares of forests – 110 million in Africa alone – by 2030, as well as reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 1.9 gigatons of CO2-equivalent. That would be the equivalent of eliminating all the emissions from airplanes and ships today.
The programs I have highlighted are part of a larger pipeline of ideas being pursued in Africa. But bringing them to fruition will require financing at scale, technology development and transfers, and capacity building. We are counting on our friends at the G20 to come together and push this energy agenda forward.
