Investment to make Africa a world leader in renewables

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 11 2019 (IPS) - Africa, where close to half of its 1.2 billion people have access to electricity, is set to become a world leader in renewable energy. As global business and development leaders met in Johannesburg, South Africa, to attend the Africa Investment Forum (AIF), one of the key focuses of the deals being discussed was around sustainable, renewable energy.

Organised by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and its various partners, the forum is expected to see $68 billion in deals closed over the next few days.

Leaders are doing all they can to encourage investment

In attendance where heads of state from South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda and Mozambique. At an invitation-only discussion among the leaders, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said there was a lot of progress in Africa as a whole.

“I have always thought it was Africa’s time. We African’s have let ourselves down, we are now realising it has always been our time. And we are now seize every opportunity and be where we should be by now,” Kagame said.

- Kagame was the driver of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) during his time as chair of the African Union in 2018. The agreement had not been in existence during the first AIF last year.
- Established in March 2019, the AfCFTA has now been signed by 54 of the 55 African member states.

Alain Ebobisse, CEO of Africa 50, the Pan-African infrastructure investment platform capitalised by the AfDB, said that there was a consensus from African leaders that they needed to do whatever they could to attractive more private investment. He said that the AIF attendance showed that there was a changing narrative for investment on the continent.

- Earlier figures had been revealed by the South African premier of Gauteng Province, David Makhura, that over 2,000 delegates were in attendance from 109 countries. Of this, only 40 percent where from Africa with the majority of investors attending from Asia, Europe and the Americas.
- Gauteng is South Africa’s wealthiest province and includes the financial centres of Johannesburg and Sandton, as well as the seat of government in Pretoria.

Renewable energy on a positive trajectory

Ebobisse said that a lot was already happening on the continent and while the media focused on the challenges there were huge success stories too — like the 1.5 GW Benban Solar Park in Egypt, which is the world’s largest solar photovoltaic plant.

“I’m sure that people are not talking enough about this major achievement which is the Benban Solar Programmer, 1.5 GW of solar that was invested mostly by the private sector in a record time,” he said.

- Africa 50 invested in 400 MW in that project and completed it from design to commercial operations in two and a half years.

Ebobisse went on to highlight Kenya’s opening this July of the Lake Turkana Wind Power project, which at a generation capacity of 300 MW makes it the largest wind power project on the continent.

“It was funded by the private sector,” Ebobisse told the media. He also looked towards Senegal which was implementing many independent power producers or IPPs in the solar sector.

“So there is a lot that is happening. We need to also widely understand the challenges and understand what is happening on the ground. And people are actually making good money in this investment. And there is nothing wrong about that. Let’s celebrate those successes,” he said.

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Making Africa a world leader in renewables

A few weeks ago, the Governors of the AfDB met in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan, approving a historic $115 billion increase to the bank’s authorised capital base to $208 billion. “This is the highest capital increase in the history of the bank since its establishment in 1964,” AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina said today.

During the October announcement Adesina had said that a significant portion of funding would be invested in climate change.

Today, in response to a question from IPS, Adesina further explained that the bank had doubled its investment in climate finance from $12 billion to $25 billion by 2020.

“Almost 50 percent of our finance will be going to climate adaptation as opposed to climate mitigation. So we are the first multilateral development bank to actually reach that balance in terms of adaptation and mitigation,” he said.

- Climate mitigation is the actions taken to reduce or curb greenhouse gases, thereby addressing the causes of climate change to prevent future warming. However, climate adaptation addresses how to live with the impacts of climate change.

“I believe that coal is the past. I believe that renewable energy is the future and we as a bank are investing in not in the past, but in the future in making sure that we are investing in solar energy, in hydro energy, in wind, all types of renewable energy that Africa needs,” Adesina said.

“We want Africa to lead in renewable energy.”

He said one of the projects was the AfDB’s Green Baseload Facility, which according to the bank, aims “to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable baseload power generation options and prevent countries from locking themselves into environmentally damaging and potentially economically costly technologies”.

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