Africa has the opportunity to leapfrog fossil fuels and transition to greener energy on the back of its abundance of battery metals.
According to Demetrios Papathanasiou, global director, energy and extractives global practice at the World Bank, Africa is extremely vulnerable, but through more collaboration it can overcome energy challenges and deliver cleaner solutions.
“Africa can walk into cleaner energy. It can go straight to that instead of being dependent on fossil fuels,” he said. “We need to reduce emissions, grab the common sense of purpose, and collaborate faster towards solutions.”
He said the continent was home to a wide variety of battery minerals critical for the decarbonisation of the world, and if approached correctly, countries on the continent could go straight to electrification.
“Combusting fuels requires complex engines that have to be maintained and taken care of. The running costs are not low. It also comes with complex and difficult manufacturing. When you electrify, everything becomes simpler. It also is an opportunity for the continent to have simpler manufacturing.”
He said these were opportunities that could move Africa forward significantly.
“The more difficult question is how we get financing for this type of activity. That is really the key for the transition itself. We pay a lot of money to burn fuels, but in a cleaner energy environment that cost will come down.”
Papathanasiou said greener solutions required more upfront capital, but the running costs were far lower. “Our goal then must be to turn the current high running costs into financing costs.”
He said while this was slowly being better understood around the world, the reality was that the process had to be accelerated.
According to Natascha Viljoen, CEO of Anglo Platinum, it was time to convert talk into action. She said mining houses needed to come up with deliverable targets and actionable projects on how they were decarbonising.
“At Anglo we have set ambitious targets as we should if one considers the serious challenges we face in reaching a decarbonised world.”
Like Papathanasiou, she said more collaboration was required, particularly between the public and private sectors. Just as important were the right policy and governance frameworks to allow the mining sector to develop at the pace necessary to reduce carbon footprints.
