NAIROBI: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on Tuesday $4.5 billion in clean energy investments in Africa during a landmark climate summit hosted by Kenya that is aimed at attracting funding for efforts to combat global warming.
Sultan Al Jaber, who leads the government-owned renewable energy company Masdar, as well as the UAE’s national oil company ADNOC and the COP28 climate said, “We will deploy $4.5 billion… to kickstart a pipeline of bankable clean energy projects in this very important continent.”
Following the Africa Climate Summit, there will be the COP28 summit in Dubai later this year, featuring various agendas for the world’s energy future. Jaber, who also serves as the UAE’s minister for industry and advanced technology, issued a warning, stating, “If Africa loses, we all lose.”
He said that the investment’s aim is to “develop 15 GW (gigawatts) of clean power by 2030” and to “catalyze at least an additional $12.5 billion from multilateral, public, and private sources.”
As of 2022, Africa’s renewable energy generation capacity stood at 56 gigawatts, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
The three-day event in Nairobi, which commenced on Monday, is designed to bring African leaders together to formulate a shared vision for sustainable development across this diverse continent, home to 1.4 billion people.
On Tuesday, the summit will present proposals for reforming global financial structures, which have disproportionately directed investments in climate solutions away from Africa.
Jaber called for a “surgical intervention of the global financial architecture that was built for a different era”, urging institutions to lower debt burdens.
African nations face mounting debt costs and a lack of financial resources, despite their abundance of natural resources. Alarmingly, only three percent of global energy investments are directed towards the continent. —APP
