Modern energy access in Africa is critical to meeting a wide range of developmental challenges including poverty reduction and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite having a huge amount ...and variety of energy resources, modern energy access in the continent is abysmal, especially Sub-Saharan Africa. Only about 31% of the Sub-Saharan African population have access to electricity while traditional biomass energy accounts for over 80% of energy consumption in many Sub-Saharan African countries. With energy use per capita among the lowest in the world, there is no doubt that Africa will need to increase its energy consumption to drive economic growth and human development. Africa also faces a severe threat from global climate change with vulnerabilities in several key areas or sectors in the continent including agriculture, water supply, energy, etc. Low carbon development provides opportunities for African countries to improve and expand access to modern energy services while also building low-emission and climate-resilient economies. However, access to finance from different sources will be critical in achieving these objectives. This paper sets out to explore the financial instruments available for low carbon energy access in Africa including the opportunities, markets and risks in low carbon energy investments in the continent.
► Access to finance will be critical to achieving low carbon energy access in Africa. ► Domestic finance will be important in leveraging private finance. ► Private sector participation in modern and clean energy in Africa is still low. ► Many financing mechanisms exist for low carbon energy access in Africa. ► The right institutional frameworks are critical to achieving low carbon energy access in Africa.
Since the establishment of the Climate Convention and its recent Paris Agreement, capacity building has been considered as a fundamental prerequisite for achieving the goals of the climate regime. ...Various institutional architectures have been explored, while the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) established the Paris Committee on Capacity-Building aiming to address needs and gaps, along with promoting current, emerging, and further capacity-building efforts. Efforts to build capacity have been underway for decades but have largely failed in their objectives as they were not designed from, and rooted in, the local context. Drawing from the author's more than 40 years of personal experience in capacity building in Africa, this paper sheds light on the systemic challenges involved in building capacities. Arrangements that do not entail working on, or being led by, an agenda set by those in capacity needs are not, by definition, capacity mobilization or capacity building efforts. It is argued that capacity is tied to self-reliance and self-determination and thus ability to set and pursue the recipient's own agenda must be at the core of development narratives.
Key policy insights
Self-reliance and self-determination are at the core of capacity development. Therefore, countries need to set and pursue their own agenda by creating and following a bottom-up and inclusive development narrative.
Intellectual, financial, and other important resources need to fall under the control of local leadership.
Partnerships and networks of research centres think tanks and similar institutions in the South should be created and maintained to build capacities.
Climate change, while a global issue, must be addressed based on a deep understanding of the local and national contexts.
The resource curse haunts countries whose economies have become dangerously specialized in the exploitation of a single resource. This curse threatens countries whose economies are poorly diversified ...and oriented mainly towards the export of their non-renewable natural resources, such as oil. What about the exploitation of an abundant renewable natural resource such as solar energy? Based on a case study of six solar power plants in six African countries (Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa), this paper analyzes the extent to which the impacts of the exploitation of these energy systems contribute to this curse. The research method is qualitative (296 interviews) and quantitative (use of a sustainability index), making it possible to analyze the impacts of solar power plants on four levels (local, regional, national, and international). Our results reveal four findings symptomatic of the resource curse: (i) the emergence of conflict situations, (ii) fragile local development, (iii) latent financial risk, and (iv) limited economic development leverage. In short, the resource curse linked to the use of renewable energies seems to bring another challenge to the landscape of energy transition.
•Resource curse haunts countries specialized in the exploitation of a single resource.•Could this unique resource be a renewable resource such as solar energy?•The exploitation of large-scale solar power plants could contribute to the curse.
Auctions have recently been regarded as a useful alternative to other support schemes for setting the remuneration of renewiable electricity (RES-E) wiorldwiide. They have also been increasingly ...adopted in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region, mostly due to their promise to support the deployment of RES-E projects cost-effectively. The aim of this article is to identify the design elements of RES-E auctions in SSA and assess their pros and cons wiith respect to different criteria. The results showi that the design elements adopted in the SSA auctions are similar to other countries, but some design elements are deemed very relevant in order to address specific constraints to RES-E investments in SSA countries, including pre-selection of sites, technology-specific (solar PV), and price-only auctions. Howiever, the main distinctive feature of auctions in SSA is that they are part of a broader policy mix of support mechanisms aimed at de-risking and providing technical support.
The Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are a group of 49 of the world's poorest countries. They have contributed least to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) but they are most vulnerable to the ...effects of climate change. This is due to their location in some of the most vulnerable regions of the world and their low capacities to adapt to these changes. Adaptation to climate change has become an important policy priority in the international negotiations on climate change in recent years. However, it has yet to become a major policy issue within developing countries, especially the LDCs. This article focuses on two LDCs, namely Bangladesh and Mali, where progress has been made regarding identifying potential adaptation options. For example, Bangladesh already has effective disaster response systems, and strategies to deal with reduced freshwater availability, and Mali has a well-developed programme for providing agro-hydro-meteorological assistance to communities in times of drought. However, much remains to be done in terms of mainstreaming adaptation to climate change within the national policymaking processes of these countries. Policymakers need targeting and, to facilitate this, scientific research must be translated into appropriate language and timescales.
The discussion to widen access to modern energy services has been influential in shaping some of the discussions on energy at the international level. The practice of widening modern energy services ...access to the poor in Africa is complex, and exacerbated by the dual nature of the energy system across Sub-Saharan Africa where traditional and modern energy systems and practices co-exist. This presents major challenges for policy makers who have to contend with a fragmented energy system, which requires the mobilisation of an array of actors at cross-sectoral levels in order to develop effective institutions and implement innovative policy frameworks. This paper further argues that, the ‘energy access’ discussion needs to take place in the context of energy transitions, giving due consideration to the productive sector as an important vehicle for change. As the link between energy and development is context specific, each African country needs to chart its own energy transition pathway into the future, and there are ample lessons that they can draw from previous energy transitions.
► Lack of access to modern energy services in Africa is an impediment to socio-economic development. ► Widening modern energy services access to the poor in Africa is complex. ► A broader approach to address the ‘energy access’ discourse is required. ► Each African country needs to chart its own energy transition pathway. ► Both fossil and renewable energy systems would be needed for a transition to modern energy sources.
Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher ...today than they were in 1990. Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses-covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries-draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve. However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control. Synthesizing the various impediments to mitigation reveals how delivering on the commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement now requires an urgent and unprecedented transformation away from today's carbon- and energy-intensive development paradigm.
PDF
