African governments face more immediately pressing economic needs than zero emissions. But meeting those needs and growing the continent's economies will depend on their energy systems evolving, argues Lily Odarno. Lily Odarno is the director of energy, development and climate in Africa at Clean Air Task Force.
Since countries began announcing net-zero commitments, one continent has been notably silent – Africa. With the exception of Malawi and South Africa, very little has been heard from governments across the continent.
And there is good reason for this. While Africans care about climate change given the region’s vulnerability to the phenomenon; many African governments must deal with more pressing needs and immediate threats if their citizens are to live to see the climate future we aspire to.
But meeting these basic needs and growing Sub-Saharan Africa’s economies to support the aspirations of its citizens depends to a large extent on how the continent’s energy systems evolve.
‘Net-zero’ first became a buzz word following the release of the of the 2018 IPCC report which revealed that rapid and transformative action was needed to limit global temperature increase to 1.5oC at the turn of the century and avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
Parties to the Paris Agreement were encouraged to adopt more ambitious commitments to support the net-zero target by 2050. Currently, 44 countries and the European Union (together representing 70% of the global economy and CO2 emissions) and some 1500 companies have pledged net zero targets.
But these pledges are still not sufficient to put us on a 1.5 oC trajectory, according to the recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that charts a global energy transition compatible with climate goals.
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Are we really worrying about Africa’s carbon emissions?
This 2009 map shows countries resized to represent their CO2 emissions. You could fit Africa into Europe and still have space left over when Europe could fit into Africa several times in the real world. The Sahara desert could power the whole continent of Africa and a large portion of Europe too. Had European leaders taken the climate warning to heart sooner they could have invested in a vast solar project for both Europe and Africa as well as investing in a distribution grid for Africa. This would have lead to greater economic growth in Africa and fewer African migrants turning up on European shores. Instead Europe has plundered Africa of its natural resources and the climate crisis will make vast swathes of the continent uninhabitable at least for part of the year, and this even if we managed to stick to a 1.5C rise.Â
