UAE pledges $4.5bn towards Africa’s clean energy development

A $4.5-billion investment in Africa’s clean energy development was announced at the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, by COP28 president Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber on the second day of the gathering. 

The funding facility is one that Al Jaber hopes will encourage African leaders to remove red tape around new energy projects to improve regulatory framework and policy, in turn attracting further investment. 

Al Jaber, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) minister of industry and advanced technology, was speaking at the gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, where delegates including presidents, ministers and organisations from around the continent and globe have gathered. The attendees are seeking to come up with solutions on climate action financing, green growth for Africa, climate action and economic development, as well as global capital optimisation.

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“The initiative will prioritise investments in countries across Africa with clear transition strategies, enhanced regulatory frameworks and a masterplan for developing grid infrastructure that integrates supply and demand.

“In short, this initiative is designed to work with Africa, for Africa. It aims to clearly demonstrate the commercial case for clean investment across this continent. And it will act as a scalable model that can be replicated to help put Africa on a superhighway to low carbon growth,” Al Jaber said.

Institutions that will invest in and mobilise additional finance include a mixed bag of public and private entities from the UAE, such as credit, insurance and energy companies. 

The announcement came a day after South African Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said at an event running parallel to the summit that further infrastructure development was needed to advance climate resilience on the continent.

Creecy emphasised that developed countries had not met their pledge of $100-billion per year in climate financing to developing countries.

“In South Africa’s view, we must pioneer the deployment of new financial instruments, particularly non-debt instruments, policy-based guarantees, and options that do not require sovereign guarantees.

“These instruments should focus on the economic costs of transition risk by taking first-loss risks on investments in technologies that are not yet commercially available. In addition, we need approaches that facilitate scaling-up through interventions that help bridge the gap to commercial project viability, mitigate risks, finance first-of-its-kind projects and support technical assistance work,” Creecy said.

The Africa Climate Summit is being held ahead of the COP28 global climate negotiations that will take place in Dubai, UAE, in November/December. Last year, COP27 saw a watered-down commitment to “phasing down on fossil fuels” as opposed to doing away with them — as numerous trusted groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have shown is required.

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