Clean Energy Transitions

Africa’s energy transitions and the role of fossil fuels have become a timely and polarizing debate. Africa’s leading institutions in this sector have clearly articulated the urgent need for data and evidence. In direct response to this call, I led the formation of a partnership on targeted research and high-level engagement on transitions pathways. Our objective is to identify the best research and data in the field and highlight the critical unanswered questions that decision-makers must consider in formulating more holistic perspectives about transition pathways. Our research observes differences and divergences across the key outlook models currently informing the debate, interrogating their proposed scenarios for African energy transitions. Based on this deep review we organize the key driving factors into a succinct problem structure and repackage the best-available data to address outstanding questions. This approach helps identify blind spots of the debates, key assumptions being made, and important variables of high sensitivity in transition pathway trade-offs for African countries. Such insights lead to an orderly sequence of clear “no regrets” actions that the majority of stakeholders can agree on for immediate action, and sharply articulated gaps in data availability requiring urgent attention as next steps.