‘Africa should follow own energy strategy’

Mines and energy minister Tom Alweendo says Africa should not be forced to move to cleaner energy by developed countries.

According to Alweendo, there are about 600 million people in Africa that still do not have access to energy, therefore Africa should be allowed to use its natural resources, despite not being defined as clean.

“When we do this energy transition, let this be a just transition in such a way that we are not actually being forced to follow a certain journey that is not really going to be helping us in the transition,” says Alweendo.

He was speaking during the Global African Hydrogen Summit in Windhoek last week.

Moreover, developing economies are probably already in a position to transition much faster than others, said Alweendo.

The minister emphasised that Africa is the least polluting continent.

“I think the message to COP29, it’s always been about let’s decarbonise, let’s address climate change, even though we (Africa) are probably the least polluting continent,” said Alweendo.

Namibia wants to be a green hydrogen leader but its approach will be through collaboration, not competition, he added.

“We want to be collaborators, Namibia cannot only be the country that can succeed doing that, but I mean if we can have our neighbouring countries – Angola, Botswana, South Africa – and we can agree to collaborate to start to build infrastructure that we are going to need …” said Alweendo.

The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP29, will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November.

Alweendo noted that unemployment can only only be addressed through creating new industries.

“The biggest challenge we have as Africa is really unemployment, especially youth unemployment. But there’s no way we are going to decisively deal with this issue of unemployment if we don’t come up with new industries,” he said.