The United Arab Emirates will be investing whopping $4.5 billion in clean energy in Africa. This was disclosed during the landmark climate summit hosted by Kenya, recently. The summit aimed at attracting funding for efforts to combat global warming.
The three-day (4th September – 6th September) event in Nairobi, which began yesterday, will be bringing together African leaders to define a shared vision for green development on the diverse continent of 1.4 billion people.
“We will deploy $4.5 billion to jumpstart a pipeline of bankable clean energy projects in this very important continent,” said Sultan Al Jaber, who heads the government-owned renewable energy firm Masdar, the UAE’s national oil company ADNOC and the COP28 climate talks.
Heads of state, and government and industry leaders, are among thousands of attendees at the Nairobi summit where Africa is promoting its potential as a clean energy powerhouse.
The COP28 summit will be held later this year in Dubai, after this Africa Climate Summit, which is expected to feature competing agendas for the world’s energy future.
“If Africa loses, we all lose,” warned Jaber, who is also the UAE’s minister for industry and advanced technology.
He said, ”The investment aimed to develop 15 GW (gigawatts) of clean power by 2030 and catalyse at least an additional $12.5 billion from multilateral, public and private sources.”
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, in the year 2022, the continent’s renewable generation capacity was 56 Gigawatts.
There will be proposals to reform global financial structures that have resulted in only a tiny fraction of investments in climate solutions being directed towards Africa.
Jaber called for a “surgical intervention of the global financial architecture that was built for a different era”, urging institutions to lower debt burden. He noted that despite an abundance of natural resources just three percent of energy investments worldwide are made in the continent.
