As the second Africa Climate Summit began in Ethiopia on Monday, a progress report launched by Kenya’s president highlighted how shortfalls in clean energy and infrastructure, a decline in manufacturing capacity, high debt levels and limited participation in global value chains are holding back green growth on the continent.
In 2023, at the first such summit in Nairobi, African leaders adopted a bold vision for the continent to become a clean energy hub and to develop local industries enabling their people to reap more economic benefits through a green industrialisation agenda.
The Nairobi declaration said that with 60% of the world’s best solar resources and 30% of critical mineral reserves which are essential for clean technologies, Africa would aim to process more of its raw materials, make production sustainable, play a bigger part in global supply chains and increase renewables capacity from about 50 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to 300 GW by 2030.
But two years on, in a foreword to the progress report, Kenya’s leader William Ruto wrote that Africa continues “to face headwinds – from crippling debt and a persistent shortfall in climate finance to the urgent need to advance adaptation and resilience, without which Africa cannot withstand today’s pressures nor thrive tomorrow”.
Speaking at the summit’s opening plenary, Ruto added that realising Africa’s vision for a climate-safe future requires action – including from the international community which “must dismantle the structural barriers that continue to hold the continent back”.
The report showed that some progress has been made but challenges remain. As the world shifts to cleaner energy and high-tech, low-carbon supply chains, Africa is in a “fragile position”, it noted.
The continent accounts for only 2% of global manufacturing value-added, while manufacturing makes up just 11% of its gross domestic product today – compared to almost 18% in the 1980s – creating fewer jobs than in other regions, the report said.
Analysts told Climate Home that issues such as weak cooperation across the region and a continued focus on exports of low-value goods continue to hamper Africa’s green industrialisation plan. To drive it forward at this week’s summit in Addis Ababa, they said leaders should seek ways to drum up the finance and investment opportunities required to unlock the “climate-positive growth” envisaged in Nairobi.
Saliem Fakir, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, said Africa must move beyond talk and show leadership on concrete initiatives that can offer “credible investment portfolios and attract the right kind of financing to scale and deliver green industrial development objectives”.
New finance paradigm needed
Financial constraints have meant that the gap between ambition and delivery remains wide, the progress report said, with 32 African countries in or at high risk of debt distress. External debt exceeded $680 billion in 2023, and around $90 billion is expected to be paid back in 2025, it added.
On top of this, despite rising climate ambition, financial flows remain insufficient, costly and poorly targeted, the report said, with Africa receiving only 23% of the $190 billion it needs annually by 2030.
To close this gap, the second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) will need to tackle unsustainable national debt burdens and a global financial architecture that is skewed towards loan-based finance, which compounds the debt problem, experts told Climate Home News.
Meron Tesfamichael, director of the Africa energy programme at the World Resources Institute (WRI), said the continent needs “quality, accessible and affordable finance that does not create more debt and hindrances to economic development and opportunities”, adding that ACS2 should look for ways to ease the bottlenecks.
The progress report called for global financing systems to be reformed to reflect current development realities, including by expanding concessional finance, delivering faster debt relief and exploring new international levies on shipping, aviation and fossil fuels.
Seyoum Mekonen, Ethiopia’s minister of planning and development, told journalists before the summit that ACS2 would present a “unified African voice and push for climate financing” ahead of the UN General Assembly this month, the COP30 climate talks in November and the G20 summit in Johannesburg.
This week’s ACS2 and upcoming multilateral gatherings also provide an opportunity for the continent to ramp up its push for local value addition. Mohamed Adow, founder of the Nairobi-based think-tank Power Shift Africa, said ACS2 should support policies and partnerships that prioritise domestic and intra-regional mineral processing, refining and manufacturing capacity in Africa.
“This commitment should be advanced through targeted financing, concessional technology transfer, and the development of skills to ensure inclusive and sustainable industrialisation,” he told Climate Home.
Initiatives yet to deliver
The Africa progress report said that since the first summit, various continent-wide efforts have been launched to deliver on its promises, including the Africa Green Industrialisation Initiative aimed at leveraging resources and advancing investments through African financing entities and structured partnerships with governments, philanthropies and multilateral institutions.
This February, meanwhile, the African Union officially endorsed Mission 300 to provide electricity access to 300 million people by 2030 – around half of those currently living without it.
Other programmes include the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa (AGIA), the Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Africa (APRA) – supported by the European Union – and the Continental Power System Masterplan (CMP). These are all aimed at improving cross-border electricity transmission networks, building resilient infrastructure and providing the clean energy African countries need to decarbonise their economies.
Boom in solar panel imports boosts hopes for clean energy take-off in Africa
Despite such initiatives – which are at different stages of implementation – Adow of Power Shift Africa said that overall progress on the ground since the Nairobi summit has been “disappointing”.
“While the world accelerates towards a green energy transition, Africa appears to move sluggishly, with the risk of being left further behind,” he said.
Some experts highlighted encouraging signs such as bans on exports of unprocessed minerals in Nigeria, Namibia and Zimbabwe and regional power projects such as the Zambia-Tanzania interconnector. Fakir of the African Climate Foundation said these showed that green industrialisation had “gained momentum” since the first ACS in Nairobi.
Kuda Manjonjo, a just transition associate at Power Shift Africa, said that overcoming roadblocks to green growth would require more regional corporation and trade between African countries to support industrialisation at home rather than exporting critical minerals further afield.
“It is important for Africa… to see its own continent as its primary market,” Manjonjo said. “There is not enough inward-looking to understand what’s possible and the potential that can be set up.”
