Africa has everything it takes to become a “renewable superpower”, United Nations head Antonio Guterres said on Aug 21, as he called for greater investment in green energy across the resource-rich continent.
Mr Guterres spoke at a three-day development conference in Japan attended by African leaders, where Tokyo is offering itself as an alternative to China as African nations reel from a debt crisis exacerbated by Western aid cuts, conflict and climate change.
“We must mobilise finance and technology, so that Africa’s natural wealth benefits African people, we must build a thriving renewables and manufacturing base across the continent,” he said at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development.
“Green power in Africa lowers energy costs, diversifies supply chains and accelerates decarbonisation for everyone.”
China has invested heavily in Africa over the past decade, with its companies there signing deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars to finance shipping ports, railways, roads and other projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative.
But new lending is drying up, and developing countries are grappling with a
“tidal wave” of debt to both China and international private creditors, the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank, said in May.
African countries have also seen Western aid slashed, in particular due to US President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development
