Authored by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Perrine Toledano, and Martin Dietrich Brauch, with Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Efosa Uwaifo, and Bryan Michael Sherril
The September 2021 draft report for consultation—"Roadmap to Zero-Carbon Electrification of Africa by 2050: The Green Energy Transition and the Role of the Natural Resource Sector (Minerals, Fossil Fuels, and Land)"—is published here as a Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) Working Paper. Please share with us any feedback or comments.
All Africans—whether living in urban or rural areas—need access to affordable, clean, efficient, reliable, climate-proof, and renewable energy for both residential and productive uses to achieve sustainable development objectives. At the same time, the world is moving to decarbonization by 2050, and Africa will be part of this global trend. Prospective oil and gas projects in Africa will no longer be pursued as overseas markets, and financing will shrink. At the same time, Africa’s vast renewable energy potential, in the solar and hydropower sectors especially, will engage increasingly bankable and highly attractive investments. In net terms, Africa has a huge amount to gain from a decisive build-up of renewable energy and the capacity to produce the minerals, hardware, and software of the new zero-carbon energy economy.
With support from the African Natural Resources Centre of the African Development Bank (AfDB), and under the guidance of Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the CCSI team prepared a report setting out a comprehensive and actionable roadmap for Africa’s zero-carbon energy transformation by 2050, with most advances achieved by 2030.
Starting from a simple and transparent model of the annual investment volumes needed to provide continent-wide access to electricity based on renewable sources, the report addresses various imperatives and challenges regarding Africa’s energy planning and financing and outlines recommendations for immediate implementation of the strategy from 2022.
CCSI is grateful for the AfDB’s support. The views in the CCSI Working Paper do not necessarily reflect the views of any other organization, including the AfDB.