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Adaptation Is Becoming Africa’s Energy Trap
I grew up learning how to adapt to electricity failure. You learn early what time power usually goes out, you know when to charge phones, when to pump water, and when to run appliances. You learn the...
Africa’s Minerals Are Becoming Bilateral, And That’s a Strategic Risk
Africa sits at the centre of the global energy transition’s material foundations. The continent holds an estimated 30% of the world’s reserves of key transition minerals, including cobalt, manganese,...
Climate Finance Is No Longer About Promises, It’s About Power Systems
For most of the past decade, climate finance has been discussed as a moral equation. If African countries showed ambition, net-zero targets, transition plans, long lists of renewable projects, and...
Five Lines Africa Should Never Cross in Energy Transition Deals
Africa is being courted again. This time, the language is cleaner: energy transition, critical minerals, clean infrastructure, climate finance. The urgency is sharper, the timelines are shorter, and...
Africa’s Energy Paradox: Powering the Global Transition While Living in the Dark
Africa is central to the global energy transition, yet marginal within it. The minerals that make modern clean energy possible are increasingly sourced from Africa. Cobalt stabilises batteries,...
Africa’s Climate Finance Pivot: The Rise of National Funds in a Post-Pledge World
For more than a decade, Africa’s climate transition has rested on a delicate fiction: that global climate finance, however slow and insufficient, would eventually scale up. Pledges would harden into...
Gas, Phase-Out, and Africa: What the Debate Is Really About
I have lost count of how many times I have heard the same sentence, delivered with confidence and concern in equal measure: Africa needs gas as a transition fuel. It is said in conference halls,...
What Happens to Climate Negotiations When Big Emitters Walk Away
For years, global climate negotiations have relied on a fragile yet powerful idea: that collective action, however imperfect, is preferable to unilateral drift. The machinery of climate governance...
When the United States Walks Away: What Trump’s UN Climate Withdrawal Means for Africa’s Energy Transition
When the United States withdraws from global climate institutions, the consequences are never confined to Washington. They ripple outward through markets, multilateral banks, diplomatic alignments,...
Africa’s Fossil Fuel Politics: The Quiet Divisions Shaping the Energy Transition
Africa often arrives at global climate summits speaking the language of unity. “A just transition.” “Common but differentiated responsibilities.” “Development first.” Behind the scenes, the reality...
Africa’s Minerals and the Global Clean-Tech Race: Beyond Extraction to Industrial Strategy
Africa’s minerals are no longer peripheral to the global economy. They now sit at the centre of the clean-technology transition that will define industrial power in the twenty-first century. Lithium,...
Minigrids at the Investment Crossroads: Why 2026 Will Decide Africa’s Power Future
Mini-grids are one of the rare areas in Africa’s energy transition where consensus exists. They work. They deliver reliable power faster than grid extension, cleaner power than diesel, and more...