Africa contributes less than 4 percent of global emissions, yet the continent faces pressure to decarbonise for a greener economy. But this decarbonisation must follow development, which remains Africa’s primary imperative.
Until Africa has addressed its development challenges, eliminated its energy poverty, and built its climate resilience, the continent should not be pressured to decarbonise like the rest of the world. And as Africa pushes for development, it should use any energy mix available, including fossil fuels – so long as there is a plan to shift to cleaner fuels in the future.
At the global level, it’s not at all clear that an “energy transition” is actually taking place. While clean energy investments have surged, production of fossil fuels continues to increase – so much so that last year saw the highest levels of fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions ever recorded, continuing a long-running trend, despite all of the supposed progress that has been made in multilateral climate talks, which has been happening over the years, despite the Paris Agreement in 2015. Something is not adding up here because renewables are just being layered on top of existing fossil systems, not replacing them. Energy sources are being expanded, not transitioned.
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This false narrative of an “energy transition” conceals the continuity of the same extractivism that has defined Africa’s position in the global economy for centuries. If the continent rushes into climate actions that are not contextualised in historical and structural realities, it will be drawn into a decarbonisation agenda that keeps the old hierarchy intact: Africa will supply critical minerals, carbon offsets, and cheap labour, while other regions will consolidate their green industrial dominance.
According to the Carbon Budget Calculator, which allocates each country a fair share of the remaining global carbon space, consistent with a 1.5°C limit, the injustice could not be clearer.
The United States – the historic and current leader in emissions – has already blown past its allowance. The country’s fair carbon budget was just over 15,000 MtCO₂, but it has already emitted 21,000 MtCO₂ – exhausting its share in 2023. Every tonne the U.S. emits now is taken from someone else’s atmospheric entitlement.
China is not far behind. The country is on course to overshoot its share by about 37 percent, burning through its allowance by 2027 unless emissions fall drastically.
Now contrast that with Ethiopia and Kenya, whose current trajectories are so low that they would not deplete their fair shares until the year 2518. Both countries are living nearly five centuries “behind” the carbon clock of the Global North. This data tells a clear story: Africa’s problem is not over-emission but under-emission, which is another way of saying underdevelopment.
The data also exposes the moral core of the climate debate. Rich countries have already exceeded their fair share and now occupy more than their rightful space in the atmosphere, while the overwhelming majority of African countries have barely used theirs.
The conclusion is simple: when Africa demands climate finance, we’re not asking for charity. We’re demanding repayment for stolen atmospheric space. As President Lula reminded the world in his opening speech at COP30, the very idea of climate finance as charity must be rejected. For Africa, the language must shift decisively to reparations and climate debt.
African scholars have long warned about the hypocrisy of a so-called “just transition” financed through loans and market instruments that deepen dependency. Real climate finance must be reparative, not concessional. For this reason, we must scrutinize the mechanisms and instruments of climate finance through a political economy lens – to interrogate the power structures at play and to determine whether the schemes actually expand Africa’s fiscal and political autonomy.
Climate action is urgent, but urgency is no excuse for reproducing the same structural injustices that created this crisis in the first place. Africa’s approach to the climate fight must be treated not as a technological fix, but as a justice project that redefines ownership and power.
Even if Africa were to fully embrace the transition narrative, the financing and technology required to support such a shift simply do not exist at the scale needed, leaving us with an argument that Africa’s development must be deferred.
At the same time, we must recognise that the real barrier to overcome is not a lack of technical capacity but a crisis of political economy. For Africa, the goal must be sovereignty, in all its forms — food sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and ultimately economic sovereignty — not GDP-centred “green growth” designed to feed global value chains.
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Africa needs its own framing and that requires data, evidence, and narratives produced by Africans, for Africans. Our think tanks and civil-society networks must challenge imported policy templates and build evidence that reclaims Africa’s policy imagination, shifting from managing scarcity to reclaiming justice and autonomy. For example, any renewable energy projects must allow the African nations that host them to determine which technology is most appropriate for the local conditions.
Africa’s low-carbon transition will be meaningful only when it expands sovereignty and restores ecological balance at the same time.
Africa must not decarbonise like the rest. We must decarbonise differently, and on terms that correct historic injustices and redistribute power and resources. Most importantly, we must transform the system itself. Only then will a fair future become possible.
Martha Getachew Bekele is the Co-founder and Director of DevTransform.
