9.1 Introduction
The first overseas trip of any leader is an especially important one. Symbolic exercises as much as anything else, these visits often spell out the foreign policy goals of a new administration. That European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen chose first to visit Ethiopia – the birthplace and seat of the African Union (AU) – is therefore no coincidence. President von der Leyen spelled out the trip’s rationale in a speech alongside AU Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki, declaring that:
[f]or my first visit, I have chosen the continent hosting the world’s fastest growing economies. A continent with immense ambition and aspirations, but also with immense needs … for the European Union [EU], you are more than just a neighbour.Footnote 1
This renewed commitment comes at a juncture of significant promise, and profound change, in modern African history.Footnote 2 With 2000 heralding the so-called ‘African century’,Footnote 3 the continent now boasts 6 of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies,Footnote 4 and is predicted to account for more than half of global population growth between 2019 and 2050.Footnote 5 Its young, economically mobile population is complemented by an abundance of natural resources, and an environmental predisposition to renewable energy opportunities like solar and wind power.Footnote 6 All of this makes it a most attractive destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). The continent’s unique vulnerability to climate change,Footnote 7 relatively low rates of electrification,Footnote 8 and high degrees of fossil fuel dependency and energy povertyFootnote 9 make such FDI an equally attractive prospect for recipient States.
Set against this investment environment, the European Union (EU) has turned its attention firmly southwards. Under the auspices of the leviathan European Green Deal (Green Deal),Footnote 10 Europe and its Member States are investing huge sums in Africa’s renewable energy potential, with a view to enabling energy transition on an international scale. Indeed, Africa is central to European efforts to export climate policy and galvanise international norms in its own image. But Europe is not alone. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has similarly noticed Africa’s rise and duly extended billions in funding for major energy projects, albeit spread across fossil fuel, renewable sources, and extractive industry, to support crucial technology supply chains.
This chapter will consider these two approaches, and examine whether, and if so, the extent to which PRC investment priorities are likely to hinder Europe’s climate-focused engagement with Africa, if indeed European engagement is really as positive as EU rhetoric would have us believe. It will begin by charting African engagement with the global climate regime, before surmising the current foundation of Afro-European relations. It will then examine energy co-operation between the two continents in detail, focusing on three European and three African States at the heart of this relationship. In the final section, it will consider the PRC’s investment profile, and interrogate its implications for Africa as against European and Paris Agreement priorities.
9.2 Africa, Europe, and the Global Climate Regime
From the earliest warnings of climate change, Africa has been heralded as uniquely at-risk.Footnote 11 With its agricultural output overwhelmingly dependent upon rainfall, the twin phenomena of drought and desertification alone present a grave existential threat.Footnote 12 That Africa must also balance imperatives like food security and poverty relief with the estimated US$50 billion cost of climate change adaptation before 2050 only complicates this outlook.Footnote 13 Africa’s current position – as an emerging green investment hub, and a voice for climate justice and sustainable development – is a direct result of these pressures, although it has not always been so. To understand modern African climate politics, one must first chart the growth of African climate diplomacy, and the accompanying boom in climate-positive investment across the same period.
9.2.1 Early African Climate Diplomacy
Co-ordinated African climate policy is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its genesis can be traced to the very first international climate summit, the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment of 1972,Footnote 14 and the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) establishment with headquarters in Kenya.Footnote 15 Motivated by a dearth of Africa-focused climate organisations, the UNEP convened a series of ministerial-level meetings between 1983 and 1985 to spur a coherent pan-African climate policy. The resulting African Ministerial Conference on the Environment’s (AMCEN) Cairo Programme institutionalised climate policy co-ordination for the first time, with an agreed platform to halt deleterious land use and achieve sustainable energy and food self-sufficiency.Footnote 16 While earlier initiatives like the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action followed similar lines,Footnote 17 the Cairo Programme was the first to achieve international acclaim and financial support.Footnote 18
The effects of this unity were not immediately felt. Despite promulgating the African Common Position on Environment and Development in 1991, which stressed the importance of channelling sustainable development funding from global North to South,Footnote 19 European and American negotiators at the 1992 Earth Summit overawed petitions from G77 States (largely developing countries, plus the PRC) to commit an exact figure to climate finance.Footnote 20 Galvanised by this experience, a pan-continental African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN) was created in 1995 for the first UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP).Footnote 21 Governed by a rotating two-year chairmanship, AGN members began meeting days prior to each COP to agree on a common position, with occasional AMCEN guidance.Footnote 22
Initial AGN efforts, like their campaign during the 1997 Kyoto Summit to make the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) more geographically and economically equitable,Footnote 23 were mostly unsuccessful. The combination of prohibitive participation costs for UNFCCC events, inadequate skills and support among delegations, and unclear mandates from delegating governments compromised the AGN early on.Footnote 24 Indeed, as Charles Roger and Satishkumar Belliethathan note, ‘[b]y the mid-2000s, it had become clear how little African negotiators had achieved’.Footnote 25 Despite these setbacks, by COP 12 in Nairobi – ambitiously dubbed ‘the Africa conference’Footnote 26 – there was a growing international appreciation for the effects of climate change on Africa, and an increasingly pan-African approach to climate negotiations.
9.2.2 Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change: Copenhagen, Durban, and Paris
COP 12 marked a definite turning point for co-ordinated African climate diplomacy. If nothing else, it was the first opportunity for the realities of climate change in the continent to be laid bare. No sooner had delegates been taken to see the drying Lake Naivasha and the dead Lake Nakuru, each besieged by massive drought, was north-western Kenya inundated by flooding rains, threatening the lives of the 160,000 refugees in the Dadaab camp complex.Footnote 27 Despite this powerful display of climate change, COP 12 had only slight successes, marginally accelerating the CDM and promoting adaptation in the developing world.Footnote 28
With the ‘Africa conference’ having fallen flat, the AU took the lead in organising a common African position. At its Thirteenth Assembly in Sirte, alongside electing to join the EU by acceding as a bloc to the UNFCCC, the AU adopted a new ‘common position’ to be advanced by the Committee of African heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC).Footnote 29 Initially agreed to take Africa’s common position only as far as COP 15, the CAHOSCC has since evolved into a regimented mechanism for whole-of-continent climate negotiation. With a rotating chair and guaranteed representation from Africa’s five regions and subsidiary AU organs, it sits above the AGN (which handles on-the-ground COP negotiation) with the AMCEN serving as an intermediary. Sure enough, with this more regimented approach, African efficacy on the international climate stage has grown. Roger and Belliethathan chart this in their 2016 chronology of African climate negotiation, contrasting the fewer than 20 submissions made by African parties at each COP from 1991 to 2006 with the massive volume made thereafter, both by the AGN and by individual African States. Indeed, they note that African/AGN contributions have come to surpass those made by the G77.Footnote 30
Building upon the AU’s 2009 Nairobi Declaration on the African Process for Combating Climate Change, which focused especially on climate finance,Footnote 31 late Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi used his AGN leadership at COP 15 later that year to advance a US$50 billion finance deal for adaptation in the global South. Although cast by some as a cession to Western demands by an environmentally inconsiderate leader,Footnote 32 it began a succession of COP summits with a strong African presence. Following a fraught COP 16,Footnote 33 the AGN was actively involved in brokering the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action at COP 17, binding parties to the negotiation by 2015 of what would become known as the Paris Agreement. Further (if limited) success was had in Doha with the extension of a second Kyoto Protocol commitment period, as well as in Warsaw with the extension of Green Climate Fund financing, before being tempered by a weak position on adaptation finance in the COP 20 Lima call for climate action. All of this culminated in COP 21, where the AGN joined the EU and United States in advancing that the landmark Paris Agreement should be legally binding.Footnote 34 By contrast to the pre-AMCEN era, they cut an experienced and effective figure on the world stage.
9.2.3 European Union–African Union Co-Operation
Afro-European relations, while deep and long-standing, did not place any real significance on climate change until at least the early 1990s. This was largely structural – between Cold War tension and African decolonisation,Footnote 35 little political will existed to focus on environmental concerns. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the European Cold War, and the dismantling of Apartheid in swift succession, however, priorities soon shifted.
The groundwork for today’s EU–AU climate relationship was laid before the AU had even come into being, with the 1996 ‘Green Paper on relations between the EU and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (ACP) countries on the eve of the 21st century’ declaring it ‘imperative to reach international agreement on clean technology and how to share the costs of environmental protection between industriali[s]ed and developing countries.’Footnote 36 Locating ‘economy, society and the environment’ as a pillar of Africa–EU relations signalled a departure from the previous interregional agreement, the Lomé Convention, which was chiefly commercial and financial in nature.Footnote 37 This dialogue culminated in mid-2000 with the first Africa–Europe summit, and the Cairo Declaration, in turn laying the basis for an intercontinental comprehensive agreement. Named for Cotonou, the city of its consecration, despite not encompassing the entire African continent,Footnote 38 that agreement underpins today’s broad-based and diverse Afro-European relationship.
Similarly to Lomé before it, the Cotonou Agreement proceeds on a set of fundamental principles, including prioritisation of the ‘environmental aspects of development’.Footnote 39 Later revisions have gone further, placing a much greater emphasis on climate change, sustainability, and the Millennium Development Goals.Footnote 40 One noteworthy example is the original article 32, governing co-operation in renewable energy and sustainable development, which has since been augmented by 32 A to focus significantly on climate change. These provisions, together with those covering economic co-operation, trade, and political dialogue, have spanned a period of exponential growth in AU–EU relations. With the treaty’s inbuilt expiry in March 2020, a provisional extension until November 2021 was granted to facilitate the imminent entry into force of a new ‘EU–[ACP] Partnership Agreement’.Footnote 41 Hopes, and expectations, are high for its arrival. Of course, the Africa–Europe relationship cannot, and should not, be understood from a purely supranational perspective. Cross-continental climate diplomacy has been pursued to an even greater extent on the State-to-State front.
9.3 Standing on African Shoulders: Africa and the European Green Deal
Since the Paris Agreement’s entry into force on 4 November 2016,Footnote 42 climate-positive European investment has steadily accelerated. Spearheading these investments is the Green Deal, ‘a new growth strategy for our economy, people and planet’, which marks Europe’s most concerted attempt to meet Paris Agreement imperatives, reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030,Footnote 43 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.Footnote 44 A complete economic transformation has been envisaged, replete with a €65 billion ‘Just Transition Mechanism’ to pivot fossil-fuel dependent regions towards green energy.Footnote 45 As President von der Leyen stated in her Earth Day 2021 address:
The Paris Agreement is humanity’s life insurance … science tells us it is not too late [to act], but we must hurry up. This is what Europe is doing. 11 days after [I took] office, [the EU] launched the European Green deal for transforming the economy.Footnote 46
Far from keeping ambitions within its own frontiers, however, the EU has also directed its attention – and considerable investments – southwards to Africa. First flagged in 2019, the EU has consistently reiterated the importance of prioritising environmental issues in Cotonou’s successor agreement.Footnote 47 In particular, it has stressed the importance of the Africa–Europe Alliance in ‘[unlocking] Africa’s potential to make rapid progress towards a green and circular economy’.Footnote 48 This has been backed up more recently by what some have called the EU’s new counterweight to the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)Footnote 49 – the €300 billion Global Gateway Infrastructure PlanFootnote 50 – which has allocated some €150 billion to Africa to accelerate the continent’s green energy transition.Footnote 51
9.3.1 Africa’s Place in the European Green Deal
While EU investment in green energy is not a new development, the recent shift in focus towards FDI marks a noticeable transition in the EU’s cogitation regarding both the Green Deal and the Paris Agreement. To this end, several significant factors are driving European investment into Africa, chief among them being the EU’s drive to establish mutually renewable (‘circular’) economies.
9.3.1.1 Mutual Benefit? What Africa Offers Europe (and Vice Versa)
As a continent, Africa is unparalleled in its ‘green’ potential. Central to this are two considerations – raw resources and energy potential. On the first count, alongside well-documented hydrocarbon deposits in States like Nigeria, Africa is also home to many of the rare earth elements critical to solar photovoltaic (PV) and other green technologies. Whether cobalt reserves in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Madagascar,Footnote 52 lithium in Zimbabwe,Footnote 53 or bauxite in Guinea,Footnote 54 the extraction of such resources will undoubtedly facilitate the transition towards renewable technologies.Footnote 55 As for energy, the EU has identified Africa’s huge potential in the transition to so-called ‘green’ hydrogen flagged in its 2020 hydrogen strategy for a climate-neutral Europe.Footnote 56 Given Europe’s geographical proximity to potentially large-scale hydrogen producers such as Morocco and Tunisia, and their potential to produce such hydrogen relatively cheaply, this situation is uniquely opportune for both sides. Not only does it offer the EU a path to profitably meet its future energy demands and climate targets, especially among those Visegrád Group (Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary) States slow to adopt renewables,Footnote 57 but it presents a vision of energy independence and reliable trading prosperity to the Maghreb.Footnote 58 Furthermore, it ostensibly offers Europe an avenue to exporting climate ambition through trade, transitioning African primary industry towards fairer and more sustainable methods and encouraging corollaries like green urbanisation, low-pollution business models, and viable agri-food systems to address African food security.Footnote 59
9.3.2 Member State Motivations behind Investment into Africa
Europe’s motivations for investing in Africa go beyond the Paris Agreement and Green Deal concerns noted above. Although these are arguably the most significant drivers supranationally, there are important – and distinct – considerations operant at the Member State level. The various approaches of Germany, France, and Spain are illustrative of this point.
9.3.2.1 Germany
Alongside its role as the Eurozone’s economic centre of gravity,Footnote 60 Germany has also been one of the major drivers behind European climate ambition, owing to a rich tradition of domestic green politics.Footnote 61 Domestically, its 2045 net zero target (in partial response to a lawsuit compelling stricter climate action),Footnote 62 successful coal phase out,Footnote 63 and high rate of renewable generation place it among the world’s leading green economies.Footnote 64 Although this ambition is a significant motivator for FDI into Africa, pressing energy security concerns are also relevant. As the EU’s largest gas consumer,Footnote 65 but with a local production capacity meeting barely 10% of demand,Footnote 66 Germany was until the onset of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine almost exclusively reliant on Russian natural gas imports. Seeing the consequences of the 2006 Russo-Ukrainian gas conflict, and amid vociferous concerns from allies about the risks of energy dependence, its 2007 Integriertes Energie- und Klimaprogramm (Integrated Energy and Climate Programme) had identified 29 measures to both improve energy efficiency and increase the use of renewable energies, with limited success from a Russian-dependency perspective.Footnote 67 2020’s Nationale Wasserstoffstrategie (National Hydrogen Strategy) refocused this on green hydrogen, mirroring developments at the EU level during Germany’s 2020 Council Presidency with a promised €9 billion in hydrogen funding into the 2030s.Footnote 68 This has translated directly into FDI – Germany having agreed a €571 million renewable energy funding agreement with Morocco in late 2019,Footnote 69 and having since committed another €100 million to the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa.Footnote 70 Hopes were high that the overwhelming international pressure to divest from Russian energy imports post-February 2022 would compound these efforts, spurring an ambitious Zeitenwende in German renewable energy policy and investment.Footnote 71 The phenomenon of ‘Scholzing’ – named for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s perceived recalcitrance – has significantly cooled these hopes, however.Footnote 72 To this end, and similarly to Germany’s dithering foreign and security posture vis-à-vis supporting Ukraine’s armed resistance, the much hoped for wave of German renewable energy investment (both foreign and domestic) under massive pressure for Russian divestment has yet to fully materialise.
9.3.2.2 France
The other half of Europe’s ‘twin engine’ alongside Germany, France has made rapid advances in its domestic renewable energy since hosting the landmark COP 21 in 2015, committing over €6 billion to the industry under 2021’s so-called Budget Vert (‘Green Budget’).Footnote 73 Like Germany it is making efforts to export this ambition, although its motivations lie more in a desire to sustain international influence than in energy security concerns. Cognisant of Africa’s consistent 5% growth rate, and especially the potential of rapidly expanding Francophone economies like Côte d’Ivoire and Benin, France has emerged as the largest single contributor to the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative, increasing financing from €2 billion to €3 billion in January 2017.Footnote 74 Although this has not been wholly seamless – with a 2021 Moroccan hacking scandal against French ministers and the suspension of French energy company Total’s €17 billion investment project in Mozambique following Islamist attacks being recent examplesFootnote 75 – Green Deal investment nonetheless provides a long term framework for regional engagement post-Françafrique.Footnote 76
9.3.2.3 Spain
Another major EU Member State with colonial ties to the continent, Spain’s geographical proximity to Africa – barely 14 km across the Strait of Gibraltar – positions it ideally to benefit from deeper EU–AU co-operation. As with Germany, much of Spain’s investment is tied to the promised hydrogen economy, with two of the four existing Europe-Africa gas pipelines travelling via Spain to Central Europe.Footnote 77 Despite green hydrogen not yet being cost-competitive compared with other production methods, hydrogen could viably be produced using wind and solar power at one euro per kilogram as the market develops.Footnote 78 With plans for a further two interconnections between Spain and France by 2040,Footnote 79 Spain has the potential to fully harness the green hydrogen wave, with North Africa’s rich renewable generation potential central to this. Economic outcomes are not the sole driver of Spanish investment, however. With its North African exclaves on the proverbial front line, Spain sees improving economic and social outcomes in the Maghreb, in part through local energy projects, as a means to stemming migration pathways to Europe.Footnote 80 Practically, as it fails to consider the complex political, economic, and environmental drivers of European migration, this approach has had little impact. Like France, therefore, Spain’s African investments reflect a matrix of domestic and foreign policy concerns.
9.3.3 Case Studies: African Foreign Direct Investment Recipients
9.3.3.1 Morocco
Among the destinations for European climate finance, Morocco is unique both in the scale of its renewable energy production and in its uptake of innovative generation, storage, and transportation technologies. With a 3,500-kilometre coastline offering windspeeds of up to 11 metres per second,Footnote 81 and an average of 3,000 hours of direct sunlight annually,Footnote 82 Morocco’s geography positions it ideally to capitalise on renewable energy. Indeed, it is already doing so, constructing the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world at Ourazazate, which when completed will generate some 580 megawatts of clean electricity.Footnote 83 Given the significant input (between 40 and 50 kilowatt hours) required to produce 1 kilogram of green hydrogen,Footnote 84 the EU and its Member States have taken an especially keen interest in Morocco’s energy transition as a means to fuelling the hydrogen economy.
European investment began to take shape out of 2013 negotiations for the so-called Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). In an EU sustainability impact assessment published in November 2013, it was noted that the DCFTA would be ‘one of several forces that [would] influence the environmental developments in Morocco’,Footnote 85 highlighting how increasing European demand for green products would encourage Morocco’s trend towards economic ‘greening’.Footnote 86 While these negotiations faltered,Footnote 87 they forestalled the sizeable European investment to come.
Following DCFTA, in 2015, a consortium of European development banks established the Morocco Sustainable Energy Financing Facility (MorSEFF).Footnote 88 With a total budget of €110 million, MorSEFF successfully financed 260 energy-efficiency projects, saving approximately 207,289 megawatts hours of energy and 102,725 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) emissions per annum.Footnote 89 This was followed by the Morocco Green Economy Financing Facility,Footnote 90 a €150 million credit line jointly established by the EU and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2018 to finance small to medium-sized green investment projects, with the aim of fostering a climate-resilient and competitive Moroccan economy.Footnote 91
These investments culminated in 2021–2022 with several major EU–Morocco agreements. The first, a renewed partnership with the EU’s so-called ‘southern neighbourhood’ signed on 26 February, involved European pledges not only to fast track the transition to a circular economy, but to enable Morocco to follow suit by expanding support for indigenous renewable energy targets.Footnote 92 The second, the so-called Green Partnership between the EU and Morocco signed on 28 June 2021, marked an important milestone in EU efforts to export the Green Deal.Footnote 93 Alongside a 12 million euro payment towards the joint Competitiveness and Green Growth Programme, the EU also announced a 20 million euro financing agreement to advance rural development within the Green Partnership.Footnote 94 The third and most impactful agreement came in February 2022, when Morocco was confirmed as the first funding recipient under the Global Gateway Investment Plan, with €1.6 billion allocated to green energy production.Footnote 95 Beyond the strictures of this partnership, Morocco is an important testbed for the very future of EU climate outreach. This is also true at the Member State level, with Morocco serving as the main staging point for German and Spanish hydrogen efforts.Footnote 96
For all this promise, political considerations have strained co-operation. After German disquiet in May 2021 over Moroccan claims to the disputed Western Sahara, Morocco recalled its ambassador and suspended German–Moroccan co-operation.Footnote 97 Despite tensions subsiding in January 2022 with the return of the Moroccan ambassador to Berlin,Footnote 98 as well as Morocco reaffirming its commitment to the Global Gateway Investment Plan in September 2022,Footnote 99 the path ahead remains uncertain, particularly given Rabat’s sensitivity over the subject. Morocco also faces several other issues that threaten to constrain burgeoning renewable technologies, namely resource demands and environmental impacts. With green hydrogen electrolysis requiring 10–15 litres of freshwater per kilogram of hydrogen output,Footnote 100 and given Morocco’s dwindling freshwater reserves,Footnote 101 seawater desalination is increasingly necessary. As this in turn draws on the power grid, a spiral of resource demand ensues. There is also the longer-term risk that producing hydrogen from electrolysis via solar PV could have a net negative environmental impact. In a life-cycle assessment comparing the production of hydrogen via nuclear energy, steam methane reformation, biomass gasification, solar PV and wind electrolysis, it was found that solar PV had the worst environmental effects given high acidification in the manufacturing phase of the PV panels and the comparatively low efficiency of PV systems,Footnote 102 although this technology is advancing.Footnote 103 As such, while Morocco is a promising green hydrogen testbed, teething problems and political hurdles remain.
9.3.3.2 Kenya
Kenya offers a similar window into European climate investment, albeit with the key difference of focusing predominantly on green economic transition rather than energy export. While the motivation for investment has a subtly different focus, it nonetheless serves to further the overarching symbiotic relationship between Europe and East Africa; a relationship that has seen European exports to the region grow on average by just under 4% annually since 2010 (to €3.6 billion in 2020).Footnote 104 To fully understand these investments, it is first important to understand how climate change has affected Kenya’s economy.
In a plight common to many nature-based economies, Kenya is feeling the effects of climate change through a steadily declining resource base. As Katrin Hagemann, acting Head of the EU Delegation to Kenya, observed in a July 2021 editorial:
[Kenya’s] wealth of natural capital, biodiversity, wildlife and marine ecosystems are under increasing strain by population growth and the imbalance between economic growth and environmental sustainability objectives, as seen in land degradation, deforestation, wildlife poaching and overfishing.Footnote 105
The reason why these factors have had such a profound impact on Kenya’s economy lies in the State’s geography. Approximately 80% of Kenya is semi-arid, with only 20% comprising viable agricultural land.Footnote 106 Moreover, the effects of overfishing, temperature increases, irregular precipitation, sea-level rise, and ocean acidification have also combined to gravely threaten Kenya’s marine ecosystems.Footnote 107 These circumstances, together with an all-time high in trade between the East African Community (EAC) and the EU, have been key to promoting climate investments in Kenya.
Since the Kenyan government’s first Paris Agreement nationally determined contribution (NDC) in December 2016,Footnote 108 Kenya has received substantial investments from Europe encouraging energy transition and climate resilience. Between 2014 and 2020, the European Development Fund (EDF) provided some €435 million in tied aid under the Multiannual Indicative Programme (MIP),Footnote 109 with €190 million being diverted towards food security and resilience, and €175 million put towards sustainable infrastructure projects including solar and wind farms.Footnote 110 This funding has helped promote environmentally sustainable initiatives like the AgriFI Kenya Challenge Fund, which since 2018 has created more than 10,000 jobs in environmentally sustainable and climate-smart agriculture.Footnote 111 Kenya also received further technical assistance and investment grants from the EU–Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund in December 2017 towards construction of the Kenya Green Mini-Grid Facility, totalling €5.65 million.Footnote 112 Following on from the EDF’s 2014–2020 MIP, the EU and EAC met in April 2021 to align their priorities for the MIP period 2021–2027.Footnote 113 The draft proposal identified three priorities for Kenya: (1) green transition and resilience, including green jobs and green energy; (2) ensuring that any such transition is equitable; and (3) promoting good governance, security and peace.Footnote 114
Despite these significant achievements, and as with Morocco, there have been some setbacks. The real efficacy of the EDF’s 2014–2020 MIP has been a notable sticking point. In a 2020 European Court of Auditors report it was found that the EDF’s €435 million ‘covered only a small fraction of Kenya’s development needs and was spread across many areas’.Footnote 115 It was also found that the €175 million allocated towards infrastructure was insufficient to implement all the proposed projects; the energy sector alone had an annual infrastructure financing need of €1.69 billion.Footnote 116 Moreover, the report indicated that those funds that had been directed towards energy infrastructure development had been unilaterally so directed as a result of EU policy, rather than at the Kenyan government’s request.Footnote 117 This tension, between climate finance as a diplomatic tool and as a meaningful vehicle for decarbonisation, goes beyond the Kenyan example to the whole Afro-European relationship. As such, the EU has several lessons to learn. Whether it chooses to commit further funding and meaningfully consult with the Kenyan government will ultimately determine the success of not only the 2021–2027 MIP, but future investments into Kenya, the wider EAC, and Africa generally.
9.3.3.3 South Africa
European climate investments into South Africa have not been as successful as efforts in Morocco and Kenya largely thanks to the country’s continued reliance on coal for energy production. Despite ratifying the Paris Agreement,Footnote 118 South Africa remains reliant on fossil fuel energy sources, and was Africa’s largest coal producer (and the world’s seventh largest) in 2020.Footnote 119 Coal is fundamental to the South African energy matrix, totalling nearly 88% of all energy production in 2019 where renewable sources supplied just under 7%.Footnote 120 This reliance means that 80% of the nation’s emissions are traceable to energy use, with 45% coming exclusively from domestic coal-generated electricity.Footnote 121
Despite this, South Africa has made several agreements with the EU, fielding several investments promoting green economic transition. The earliest of these dates to the EU’s 2007 strategic partnership joint action plan, which enshrined broad climate change co-operation and established the Mogôbagôba policy dialogue.Footnote 122 South Africa has also received investments under the EU’s €241 million 2014–2020 MIP allocation,Footnote 123 and most recently benefitted from the EU’s Urban Low Emission Development Strategies (Urban-LEDS) project. Despite receiving just under 18% of an initially allocated €6.7 million budget,Footnote 124 Urban-LEDS succeeded in not only encouraging green municipal infrastructure financing,Footnote 125 but in changing some perceptions of renewable energy usage (if only on a small scale). This was reflected in shifted political will among participating South African mayors regarding energy-efficient living,Footnote 126 and has been exemplary especially for those participating communities that previously had limited electricity access.Footnote 127
9.4 Africa’s Contested Energy Future
Europe is far from alone in identifying Africa’s huge potential as an energy partner. Given the continent’s above-mentioned resource wealth, and the prospects of local investments yielding huge returns as African industrialisation accelerates, its energy future has become subject to something of an international tug-of-war. Central to this contest, alongside Europe, is the PRC. The pressing question is how PRC priorities – both political and economic – will interact with Europe’s climate-positive investment profile and the growing African climate ambition.
9.4.1 People’s Republic of China Investment into Africa
Just as with the recent European diplomatic offensive mounted against African States, the PRC has made no secret of its designs on energy co-operation with the continent. In his opening address to the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China–Africa Co-operation, PRC Paramount Leader Xi Jinping declared:
[The PRC] will work with Africa to pursue green, low-carbon, circular and sustainable development … We will strengthen exchange and co-operation with Africa on climate change, clean energy, prevention and control of desertification and soil erosion, protection of wildlife and other areas of ecological and environmental preservation. Together, we could make [the PRC] and Africa beautiful places for people to live in harmony with nature.Footnote 128
These are not mere abstractions. Since 2000, FDI from the PRC into Africa has risen from US$149 million to some US$3.1 billion in 2020, with a of total US$53 billion invested in that period and an average annual investment of US$4.6 billion since 2010.Footnote 129 It is easily the continent’s largest source of overall FDI, more than doubling United States investment in 2019.Footnote 130 The truth of Xi’s green sentiments is less resolute, however. As with Europe’s green focus, the targets of PRC investment are demonstrative of similarly longstanding national priorities, chiefly the acceleration of domestic economic growth. From the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, the PRC’s rapid development has been predicated in large part upon construction and industrialisation. While Australian iron ore and coal have underpinned the bulk of this, Africa’s role as an energy and materiel supplier is not insignificant.
Behind construction (just under 29%), mining (just over 26%) was the largest source of PRC FDI into the continent in 2016, with investments in sectors like information technology making up a mere 5%.Footnote 131 Such is the importance of African extractive industry that when Guinea – a key bauxite supplier – was rocked by a September 2021 coup, the PRC broke with its usually resolute non-interference policy to publicly oppose the interim government,Footnote 132 having already seen regime instability complicate resource deals in West Africa and the Sahel.Footnote 133 Alongside iron ore and bauxite imports, one of the PRC’s main focuses is on controlling those elements essential to digital technology. Building on its rare earth mineral monopoly – controlling some 90% of the world’s supply – it has purchased majority shares in South African lithium holdings, as well as mines representing more than half of the DRC’s cobalt mining output, among other pursuits.Footnote 134 These linkages will be essential as the PRC’s domestic technology industry continues to grow.
The PRC’s investment profile can by no means be attributed solely to self-interest, however. Funding for continental energy capabilities, alongside infrastructural support, has emerged as a central pillar of BRI-era FDI. Although these investments, like those in mining, have not generally prioritised climate change imperatives, this trend is changing. Of the US$24.361 billion invested in African energy since the conclusion of the Paris Agreement, US$15.4 billion has been put into natural gas, coal, and oil projects, whereas only US$8.961 billion has gone towards renewables.Footnote 135 Although only a negligible US$361 million of this has been put towards solar and wind power in that time, the growing stake of hydropower is to be commended, equalling fossil fuel investments between 2000 and 2020 (Figure 9.1).Footnote 136
PRC energy finance flows to Africa 2000–2020 (constant US$ billions).
9.4.2 Comparing Europe and the People’s Republic of China
9.4.2.1 European Motivations
For Europe, almost irrespective of the language of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘energy justice’ (although these do factor into the political calculus), investment in Africa is future-oriented. By committing to renewable capabilities in North Africa in particular but across the continent more widely, Europe and its Member States are creating for themselves a massive energy generation capability directly bordering the continent. Coupled with growing investment in interconnector projects like Elmed,Footnote 137 and European commitments to hydrogen technology, African renewable energy offers a viable path towards energy security. Ongoing concerns – both political and environmental – over reliance upon Russian natural gas and stigmas surrounding civilian nuclear energy only encourage this (Figure 9.2).
Renewable energy finance flows to Africa pre-COVID (2010–2019, constant 2019 US$ millions).
Investing so heavily in African renewable energy also carries major economic potential by ensuring a future supply of ready-made trading partners. As Europe advances the Green Deal and establishes measures like the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM),Footnote 138 African States nurtured in its green image will be ideally placed for deeper trading relationships. This goes beyond energy – more prosperous African middle classes, enriched by domestic renewable generation and European investment, will have a greater appetite for goods and services. An underlying hope in some quarters is that by promoting African socioeconomic growth, State stability will improve, thereby lowering or even eliminating their diplomatic advantage over Mediterranean EU States in relation to immigration controls.Footnote 139 Although African States are not necessarily victimised by this transaction, the long-term benefits for Europe are much greater.
Lastly, green investment in Africa has an important political function, as a major offensive in the EU’s effort to export its climate policy vision. Seeing itself as a norm-entrepreneur, investment incentivises African States to follow Europe’s lead on issues like emissions trading, carbon accounting, and hydrogen certification, in turn drawing momentum away from international alternatives.
9.4.2.2 People’s Republic of China Motivations
PRC investment in Africa is as equally motivated by future prosperity as Europe, if for different reasons. Where Europe has committed itself to the Green Deal and designs on global climate policy leadership, the PRC has, at least in the short to medium term, committed itself to fossil fuels domestically, having until 2030 to reach its peak NDC-enshrined carbon output.Footnote 140 As the world’s largest consumer of coal, and second largest of oil, promises of green transition have given way to increasing usage of both after a dip in the mid 2010s. Diplomatic tensions with historic major supplier Australia have necessitated diversification in supply, with Africa helping to partly redress that difference.Footnote 141 Hydrocarbon deposits exemplify this: whilst only accounting for just over 7% of the world’s proven oil reserves,Footnote 142 predictions of future discovery in Africa have driven greater PRC engagement with States like Angola and South SudanFootnote 143 (18% of the PRC’s oil imports having come from Africa in 2020).Footnote 144
As in Europe, the PRC is also motivated by the economic imperative of building a reliable pool of future trading partners, although one predicated partly upon fossil fuels. Encouraging coal mining and fossil fuel generation has an important advantage in this regard – ease. Where European investment is tied to energy transition, and thereby costly transformative change to things like grid infrastructure, money from the PRC has the benefit of building upon existing systems. This is so even considering the PRC’s 2021 announced cessation of overseas coal-fired power plant funding, which has the potential to vitiate some US$50 billion in global FDI.Footnote 145 Taking its place in the PRC investment profile is hydropower, which integrates into existing power infrastructure much easier than wind and solar,Footnote 146 both of which have received negligible funding (Figure 9.1).Footnote 147 For those African States with low rates of electrification, infrastructural constraints, and limited funding, such ease is hugely appealing.
None of this is to say that claims by figures such as Xi Jinping to ‘promot[ing] the transition to green and low-carbon development’ are totally baseless,Footnote 148 of course. Alongside hydropower, the PRC is the world’s largest supplier of solar PV technology by some distance,Footnote 149 and among the leaders in patent filings for renewables.Footnote 150 Despite the significant environmental and wildlife concerns tied to hydroelectric damming,Footnote 151 projects like the Bui Dam in Ghana have nonetheless complied with environmental and social impact assessments.Footnote 152 But cynicism remains. Partly, this is due to suspicions that the PRC’s green turn has been equally motivated by a desire to capitalise on United States vacillations, set against a longer-lens view of great power contest. Mostly, however, it stems from a perception that PRC climate action is largely tokenistic. Promises of net zero by 2060 and ceasing coal-fired FDI are caveated significantly by domestic inaction and an emissions profile which has shown almost no sign of shrinking.Footnote 153 African natural gas, oil, and extractive coal investments are central to this.
9.4.2.3 Destined for Conflict?
Europe and the PRC are not fundamentally at odds in their pursuits of African climate investment. Both have made significant verbal commitments to green transition domestically and internationally, and demonstrated their intent with funding for major projects across the continent. Where they do diverge is the degree of this commitment, with inevitable consequences for African FDI recipients. On the one hand, Europe is investing on the basis of energy transition and a green future, if more for its own benefit than for that of Africa. On the other hand, the PRC is investing in Africa at least partly to perpetuate fossil fuel supply chains, sustaining its own economic growth while simultaneously nurturing future trading partners. African States are left to choose. Of course, the choice is not wholly balanced – for States like sun- and wind-rich Morocco, or hydrocarbon-rich Nigeria, natural alignment to European or PRC energy philosophies makes choosing easier. It is also by no means mutually exclusive – African States remain equal and sovereign agents, able to freely court investment from both sides as they see fit. But the choice remains.
By choosing to follow the EU’s climate policy philosophy, and accepting investments geared towards energy transition, African States can mitigate the adverse effects of the CBAM on trade and gain increasingly greater access to the common market. This, in turn, disincentivises both fossil fuel energy and – eventually – fossil fuel trading, abstracting these States from deeper PRC engagement in the medium term. Conversely, accepting PRC investments and committing further to fossil fuels makes trade with the EU more difficult, but makes energy and resource trade with the PRC much more lucrative. It also opens the way further for crucial infrastructural support under the BRI, which the EU is unable to match. This divergence is only likely to be exacerbated by growing European climate ambition and the resultant pressure on other international actors to follow suit.
In the result, conflict between the PRC and Europe is not especially concerning as between them. It is in Africa that any adverse effects will be felt, and not just environmentally. As the AGN has repeatedly sought to impress upon the world, climate change is a real and present danger for Africa. The transition to green energy is an inevitable one. As such, those States that choose to meet PRC fossil fuel demands in the short term – that is, before the 2030 NDC emissions cap – stand to suffer the most. In that short term, trade opportunities with Europe and other regions imposing CBAMs will decrease. Continental market integration, which is already relatively weak,Footnote 154 could suffer as the divide between more and less climate-proactive States grows. Assuming the PRC follows through with its NDC and reduces emissions post-2030, these same States will be left doubly disadvantaged, lacking a ready market for fossil fuels while being left some 10 years behind the rest of the continent in their energy transition.
Regardless of a degree of self-interest, European climate investments in Africa are fundamentally motivated by the aim of achieving Paris Agreement goals through energy transition. Investment is therefore a major vehicle for exporting climate policies to the continent. Whether this will be successful will in no small part depend upon the course charted by the PRC. If its current behaviour – defined by inconsistencies between domestic and international action, and caveats to otherwise significant pledges – persists, African FDI recipients will be left at a long-term economic and environmental disadvantage. Conversely, if these gestures are meaningfully actioned, and accompanied by efforts to curb domestic fossil fuel consumption and incentivise energy transition through FDI, an international ‘race to zero’ might truly begin, with Africa involved from the outset.Footnote 155
9.5 Conclusion
Africa has made massive progress in the field of climate policy across the last three decades, perhaps more than any other region. From aspirational declarations and programmes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, set against an otherwise disparate body of continental climate policy and action, the AGN has emerged as a major actor in the global climate regime. Spurred in large part by the Paris Agreement, this diplomatic momentum has given way to focused FDI attention, with Africa now sitting at the centre of a crucible of climate investment.
Europe – both supranationally and in its Member States – has been a leading proponent of this investment drive. In its effort to export the Green Deal, establish a viable international green economy, and pioneer the norms upon which that economy is based, Europe has negotiated an array of agreements with African States. While much of this FDI has been directed towards promoting energy transition, such as in Morocco and Kenya, Europe is also ensuring its future energy security by the same token. The renegotiated Cotonou Agreement is expected to further entrench these green ambitions in the continent-to-continent relationship.
The EU is not the only actor seeking to impress itself upon Africa’s energy transition, however. The PRC has made similar inroads, albeit on a different climate footing. Unlike Europe, which is motivated by a desire to pioneer international climate policy, PRC investments are largely focused on securing supply lines and future prosperity. Despite a growing hydro-energy focus, and promising developments such as the decision to cease overseas coal-fired power plant funding, the PRC’s climate ambition is substantially weaker than that of Europe, as evidenced by ongoing support for Africa’s oil, gas, and extractive industries.
As this chapter has sought to explain, to characterise simultaneous European and PRC investments in Africa as ‘competitive’, or as marked by any significant degree of tension, is misguided. Rather, these investments reflect divergent philosophies of energy transition. Where European investment is predicated upon green energy transition, particularly the transformative change inherent in solar PV, wind, and hydrogen, PRC investment is marked by a short-term support for fossil fuels and an inclination towards less disruptive renewable investments like hydropower. The result, whereby PRC investment feeds into a continued hydrocarbon dependence among some African States, presents a major hurdle to European visions of nurturing a green Africa. In offering itself as a short-term harbour for fossil-fuel dependent and economically vulnerable African economies and extending much-needed infrastructure funding under the BRI, the PRC has firmly established itself in the African market. The consequence is that, as long as the PRC’s ambitious climate rhetoric is belied by practical support for fossil fuels and extractive industry, a division will be perpetuated between those African States transitioning to renewables and those remaining reliant on fossil fuels. This divide will only harm Africa’s continental integration and energy transition.
Europe has made clear that it sees Africa as a key partner towards achieving its Paris Agreement goals. The PRC has, at least in much of its rhetoric, espoused similar sentiments. The difference lies in their actions. As long as this discord persists, the long-term disadvantages for those African States which court fossil fuel investments will mount. It will fall to the PRC, and the sincerity of its climate policy commitments, to determine whether European climate ambition will find a willing partner or a halting adversary in Africa.
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