Re: Africa
Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 3:26 pm
African Countries Mull Standby Force to End Insurgencies
Illegal armed groups in Nigeria, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @StrawberryNG
Published 21 November 2022 (2 hours 51 minutes ago)
This initiative seeks to contain the advance of armed insurgents and the jihadist groups in Ghana, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, and Niger.
On Sunday, Ghanaian National Security Minister Albert Kan Dapaah announced that seven member states of the Accra Initiative are considering setting up a standby military force to deal with armed insurgencies within the region.
He disclosed this at a press briefing to throw more light on steps so far to protect the territorial integrity of member states and the subregion in general.
"We are seriously considering establishing a standby force, but the form it would take is still under consideration," Dapaah disclosed.
"Chiefs of defense staff from our states have been holding discussions on the details of the standby force, and once we are ready, we would inform the public on the form it would take," he said, disclosing that porous borders in the subregion and ungoverned spaces in the various countries were some of the key attractions to the armed insurgents and the jihadist groups.
"One of our key considerations is ensuring that there are not many ungoverned territories in our member countries. We will also make it difficult for the jihadists to radicalize youth in border communities," said Dapaah.
"Youth unemployment is one critical factor in radicalization. Our ability to handle youth unemployment in a more coordinated manner so that it does not become a threat to national and regional security will be key in dealing with the armed insurgencies in the member states," he said.
The Accra Initiative was established in 2017 to enhance intelligence and security cooperation among the member states, which include Ghana, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, and Niger.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Afr ... -0003.html
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Burkina Faso Confronts a Humanitarian Catsatrophe as Jihadists Besiege Cities
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 19, 2022
The government of Burkina Faso calls for calm, restraint and not to risk plunging the country into the maelstrom of demonstrations.
A political struggle at the service of jihadists
On Saturday, the government of Burkina Faso called on residents to “remain calm and exercise restraint” following a demonstration against the French presence in the country against a background of rumors that Russia supports the recent coup led by the young captain Ibrahim Traore (34), turning the conflict into a hidden battle of influence between Paris and Moscow.
This hidden conflict comes at a time when residents of cities besieged by jihadists are suffering from hunger and a clear government deficit.
“The government calls on the population for calm and restraint, and not to risk plunging our country into an endless cycle of demonstrations that offend our goals of peace, stability and security sought by our people,” government spokesman Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement.
He added that the government ” calls on young people in particular not to deviate and focus on defense goals in the comprehensive war we are waging against terrorism (…) instead of these demonstrations, the usefulness of which has not yet been proven on the cause of the struggle of our people.”
Jihadists consolidate their positions
رفض الوجود الفرنسي متواصل Burkina Faso security forces on Friday dispersed a demonstration in Ouagadougou in which hundreds of people protested against the presence of France, some waving Russian flags, saying they wanted their leaders to strengthen relations with Russia.
The demonstrators gathered at the United Nations roundabout in the heart of the capital and headed to the French embassy, some on motorcycles, to the campoinsin base on the outskirts of the capital, where France has a military presence within the sabre force.
The government of Burkina Faso stressed on Saturday that it “will not abandon the rules and principles of protection that it adheres to towards diplomats and diplomatic missions located on the territory of Burkina Faso”.
On October twenty-eighth, hundreds demonstrated to demand “France leave Burkina Faso within 72 hours”.
On the anniversary of the September thirtieth coup that brought Ibrahim Traore to power, who has since become interim president, demonstrators attacked French interests in Burkina Faso, including the embassy and two French institutes.
Moscow enjoys growing popular support in several French-speaking African countries, while the reputation of France, a former colonial power, is increasingly being tarnished, especially in Mali, a neighboring country of Burkina Faso, which has also been led by military coup since 2020.
In Burkina Faso, the ruling military council has not closed the door to rapprochement with Russia, but has not shown any hostility to France, which continues to support the Burkina Faso army in its fight against jihadists.
As Burkina Faso finds itself caught between France and Russia, residents of a large number of towns in the north of the country, NGOs and the authorities emphasize that the humanitarian situation is “catastrophic” and getting worse in this region besieged by jihadist groups.
Idrissa Badini, spokesman for a group of civil society organizations in the province of SOM and its capital, Jibo, said that “the situation is catastrophic” in this city, explaining that “hunger has reached a level that kills children and the elderly”.
He added that 15 people died of hunger in October in this city, which has been besieged by jihadists for months. ”There are probably more victims and not all of them have been reported”.
By blowing up bridges and launching deadly attacks against convoys supplying this large city in northern Burkina Faso, the jihadists have plunged Djibo and its region into destitution.
“All the shops are closed, ” said Slimane Diko, a resident of Djibo who moved to the capital Ouagadougou. There is nothing to eat and nothing to sell”. “Whether you are poor or rich, you cannot buy anything because the products are not available,”
“The worst thing is that in the dry season the leaves of trees or other herbs that we used to cut to boil are no longer available. People are starving. It is very difficult to supply the city by road, ” he explained in response to an AFP question. When we walk the wild road we realize that we are in the axis of death, the axis of Jibo – burzanga”.
Dozens of towns in Burkina Faso are facing the same conditions as in Djibo. About a million people are currently living in areas under siege.
Along this road, several convoys carrying supplies have been attacked recently. In September, 35 people, including children, were killed when a mine exploded while a truck carrying them was passing, while 11 soldiers were killed in another ambush targeting a convoy.
These supplies are essential. In many parts of the country, agricultural production has stopped and access to the fields is difficult due to insecurity.
Ibrahim Traore chose to go to Djibo on his first trip in the country at the beginning of November. He did not underestimate the seriousness of the situation.
“Go see the children whose skin has become glued to their bones, the elderly who are starving, and women who can no longer breastfeed because they have no milk left,” he said a few days ago in Ouagadougou to representatives of political parties and civil society organizations.
“Let’s not pretend” that everything is fine, he added, stressing that “this is happening, people are eating leaves of trees in order to survive. The situation is alarming ( … ) in a land that has almost been lost”.
For years, Jibo has become a gathering point for displaced residents of the northern regions who fled the jihadist violence of groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Its population has tripled and today it is estimated at about 300 thousand people. But at the moment, some are trying to flee south to the capital Ouagadougou.
“After being deprived of water, food, medicine and a telephone network, many are leaving Jibo on foot at night in the hope of reaching areas that are still accessible,” said one humanitarian worker, requesting anonymity.
The United Nations says dozens of towns in Burkina Faso are facing the same conditions as in Djibo. About one million people currently live in areas under siege in the north or east of the country.
Idrissa Badini cites the example of the town of arbinda, located east of Djibo, where tens of thousands of people from neighboring areas gathered to escape the attacks.
“The regular land convoys that used to provide the population with food and living materials have stopped and nothing is reaching Arbinda anymore,” he said. “The population, which has exhausted its reserves, is about to face a humanitarian catastrophe,” he added.
Despite the attacks, supplies have recently resumed. At the end of October, the army transported seventy tons of grain by air to the city of Jibo, which then provided it by land on the second and third of November with more than 300 tons of food, according to the General Staff. Seven mines were deactivated en route.
“We have managed to supply some villages, but the supply of other villages has not yet been completed,” said Captain Traore.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), some 3.5 million people will need emergency food assistance in the coming months in Burkina Faso.
Al Arab
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ge-cities/
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“South Africa’s ‘Just’ Transition climate deal with the west is a betrayal of the working class”
South Africa is set to implement an $8.5bn plan funded by western countries to transition from coal-based energy to renewables. The country’s biggest union NUMSA has warned this plan will only intensify privatization while burdening South Africans with debt and poverty.
November 20, 2022 by Tanupriya Singh
President Cyril Ramaphosa and the International Partners Group at the JET Investment Plan meeting on the sidelines of COP27. Photo: @PresidencyZA/Twitter
During the World Leaders Summit at COP27, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP).
The plan is the product of a process that began a year ago at COP26, when the US, the UK, France, Germany, and the European Union, collectively called the International Partners Group (IPG), announced the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with South Africa.
The JETP set a lofty goal — “to accelerate the decarbonization of South Africa’s economy, with a focus on the electricity system” to help it reduce harmful emissions as set out in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.
However, progressive forces have warned that the plan will have a disastrous impact on working class communities, especially those dependent on the coal sector for their livelihood, while driving a massive privatization of South Africa’s energy sector.
Presenting the Investment Plan on November 7, President Ramaphosa stated that South Africa would need $98 billion over the next five years to enable a just transition. The plan identified three priority sectors for investments: electricity, green hydrogen, and new energy vehicles. The Plan was endorsed by South Africa’s Cabinet on October 19.
For its first phase, the IPG is ‘mobilizing’ $8.5 billion including “grants, concessional loans, and investments and risk sharing instruments” from both public and commercial lenders. According to an official statement, the funding will be geared towards coal plant decommissioning, funding alternative employment in coal mining areas, investments towards renewable energy, and new sectors of the green economy.
$2.6 billion will be allocated through the Climate Investment Funds Accelerating Coal Transition Investment Plan, $1 billion each from the US, EU, France, and Germany, and $1.8 billion from the UK.
“A ‘Just’ approach underpins the Plan,” a joint statement declared, “aiming to ensure that those most directly affected by a transition from coal – workers and communities including women and girls – are not left behind.”
How is the JETP actually approaching just transition in South Africa — by pushing a country where over 55% of people are already living in poverty and 46% are unemployed further into debt? Only around 4% of the IPG funding package is in the form of grants. 81% is loans.
Not only that, nearly 90% of the financing is geared solely towards infrastructure. Skill development and economic diversification and innovation, which would undergird any commitment to justice in the JET-IP, have been allocated only 0.1% and 0.3% of the financing respectively.
Privatization and energy poverty in South Africa
On paper, nearly 85% of South Africa’s population has access to electricity. However, rolling blackouts or loadshedding and high prices have effectively placed it out of reach for millions in the country.
Instead of developing and properly managing the state-owned, and coal-power dependent, utility company ESKOM, the South African government has chosen the path of austerity and privatization.
“By virtue of it being a state-owned entity, ESKOM can drive a developmental agenda, which means that by its very nature, it should not be making profit, rather it should be creating space for the provision of affordable and reliable electricity. If it was well-run, it would be able to do that,” the national spokesperson for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, told Peoples Dispatch.
“ESKOM’s challenges have everything to do with poor governance and the African National Congress’ own policies of dumping our state owned entities (SOEs).”
The Institute of Economic Justice points out further that the JET-IP deal relies heavily on using funds to ‘de-risk’ private investment. Moreover, financing is “tied to the expansion of private-sector energy generation, through lock-ins and demand agreements, which will likely raise the cost of energy provision thereby limiting access and exacerbating energy poverty.”
It added that the plan ignored “energy affordability concerns,” focusing instead on access to the grid as a means to reduce energy poverty. The JET-IP emphasizes “cost-reflective tariffs,” which the institute argues will lead to continued high electricity prices and restrict cross-subsidization for the poor.
As Hlubi-Majola stated, “There is no privately-owned company that will care about providing affordable energy for all, for the poor and the indigent. That is not the goal… their goal is to drive profit.”
“Despite the public perception that the accelerated drive toward renewable energy is fueled by climate change,” argues engineer and researcher Brian Kamanzi, “the reality is that it is primarily driven by imperatives to implement private sector reform in the power generation sector. This is done by leveraging the advances in renewable energy systems.”
This is clearly evidenced by the fact that, as NUMSA points out, the government’s plan says nothing about the future of ESKOM— “ESKOM’s role seemingly is simply to enable the private sector to access the grid, but it will not have any direct role in providing renewable energy to the population.”
A major share of new investment will be private and in the form of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Program (REIPPP). NUMSA had tried to block its rollout in 2018, arguing that its introduction would mean that coal-fired power stations would be shut down to make way for privately-owned renewable energy companies.
Even though the government has committed to shutting down power stations, Hlubi-Majola stated that affected communities had not been meaningfully engaged — “This is a total violation of the principles of a just energy transition as defined by the International Labor Organization which stipulates that communities and workers must be the ones to not only drive the consultation process, but also that they must be the ones to define the resulting plan because that plan must benefit them directly.”
“What we have seen instead is the government embarking on a box-ticking exercise after already beginning the process of shutting down power stations.”
An estimated 124,000 jobs would be lost by 2030 in an escalated decommissioning of ESKOM. 8,000 people in Mpumalanga in the coal belt would directly lose their jobs, not to mention families and communities that would be impacted in a myriad other ways. There is no social plan in place for them. According to NUMSA, 12 out of ESKOM’s 15 coal-fired power stations are located in the region.
ESKOM has already started leasing the land around its power stations in Mpumalanga to renewable energy companies. It employs approximately 30,000 people across the country.
Looking at the REIPPP more specifically, Hlubi-Majola added, “Earlier this year, when ESKOM was making an application to the national energy regulator, NERSA, to increase its tariffs, it stated in its submissions that a big part of the increases was a result of the cost of the REIPPs. These REIPPs are a part of ESKOM’s cost burden.”
“ESKOM is spending a large portion of the money it has on exorbitant primary energy costs which, for over the last 10 years have increased by 17% year by year.The REIPPs are a part of these primary energy costs which are choking ESKOM and choking the consumer.”
“You are not even future-proofing your own state-owned entity to play an important role in this climate change scenario…t is a mistake for the South African government to hand over this process of transitioning from coal to renewable energy [from ESKOM] to the private sector and hoping that the private sector will miraculously deliver on a developmental agenda,” Hlubi-Majola had earlier emphasized in an interview with Breakthrough News.
“By handing over ESKOM in this way, basically destroying its future and enabling and allowing the private sector to play a greater role in energy generation, the government is betraying the working class. They are guaranteeing that South Africans remain poor, that the country’s status as the most unequal in the world continues for generations to come,” she told Peoples Dispatch.
“We have a duty to ensure that our SOEs play a direct role in empowering the working class and the masses. Unfortunately, the South African government has been reading from the playbook of the World Bank and other international financial institutions who have been driving an agenda of neoliberalism and privatization”
A just transition for the people, not profit
Even as the global South is already bearing the historically unjust burden of the climate crisis, industrialized countries of the North seem to be moving backwards, re-opening coal plants to secure their own energy supplies while touting the importance of a just climate transition on the international level.
“You cannot industrialize your economy based on renewable energy alone because it is an intermittent form of energy, you need a base load supply that is either coal or nuclear.” Hlubi-Majola explained. “Even as Germany is reopening its coal plants, South Africa is closing them down. Germany is not the one facing frequent blackouts.”
“Load shedding has cost South Africa’s economy over $4 billion rand (US$2.3 billion) in 2022 alone.This has a direct impact on our economic outlook. If we are serious about job creation, about building the economy and absorbing the unemployed, we must industrialize. Unfortunately, the renewable energy plants are not labor-intensive.”
Despite the fact that all of Africa has contributed a miniscule portion of global carbon emissions, Hlubi-Majola asked, why are countries on the continent “racing to implement a transition which we know objectively is very disruptive and will result in more poverty and unemployment. Why are we doing more than those who are actually responsible for this climate crisis?” Especially when there is no plan in place to mitigate the effects of the JETP deal on local communities.
The importance of a just transition is not lost on the global South, where communities at the frontlines have been fighting for survival for decades. The question is what does a truly just transition look like?
For years, NUMSA has been calling for a ‘socially-owned renewable energy sector’.
“When you look at the JET-IP, there is no ownership component for the benefit of workers or communities,” Hlubi-Majola noted importantly, “they are not talking about renewable energy companies that are owned through cooperatives.”
“For us, a just transition would have been one that allowed workers and communities of Mpumalanga, who stand to lose the most from this deal, ownership of renewable energy companies. The technology that is being used should be owned by South Africa… How do we stand to benefit from this deal when there is going to be so much disruption and displacement for ordinary workers and their families?” she asked.
“The only people who stand to benefit are a minority of the elite. Among the biggest beneficiaries is Patrice Mostepe, who is related to President Ramaphosa through marriage, and whose firm won 12 out the 25 renewable energy plans.”
A just transition, Hlubi-Majola stressed, would have been one where “ESKOM (an SOE) would control at least 70% of the renewable energy space in this country. In doing so, you would have safeguarded the jobs of the thousands of workers at ESKOM, you would also be transforming it from the coal-guzzling, polluting entity that it is to one that is contributing to tackling climate change directly.”
“They must stop perverting the term just transition. There is nothing just about this current process.”
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/20/ ... ing-class/
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People gather in Tahrir Square, Cairo, 2011 to call for an end to sectarian divides and support for Palestine (Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr commons license).
Towards a just transition: breaking with the existing order
Originally published: ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy) on November 15, 2022 by Hamza Hamouchene, Ouafa Haddioui and Katie Sandwell (more by ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy)) | (Posted Nov 19, 2022)
The mainstream narratives on the climate change, the ecological crisis and the energy transition in North Africa are still dominated by international neoliberal institutions, whose analyses are biased and exclude questions of class, race, gender, justice, power, or colonial history. Their proposed solutions do not address the root causes of the climate, ecological, food and energy crises. The knowledge produced by such institutions is profoundly disempowering and overlooks oppression and resistance, focusing largely on the advice of ‘experts’, to the exclusion of voices from below.
The historical, political, and geophysical realities of the North Africa region mean that both the effects of and the solutions to the climate crisis there will be distinct from those in other contexts. North Africa was forcibly integrated into the global capitalist economy in a subordinate position: colonial powers influenced or forced North African countries to structure their economies around the extraction and export of resources—usually provided cheaply and in raw form—coupled with the import of high-value industrial goods. The result was large-scale transfer of wealth to the imperial centres, at the expense of local development.1
The persistence today of such unequal and asymmetric relations reaffirms the role of North African countries as exporters of natural resources, such as oil and gas, and primary commodities that are heavily dependent on water and land, such as monoculture cash crops. This entrenches an outward-looking extractivist economy, exacerbating food dependency and the ecological crisis while maintaining relations of imperialist domination and neo-colonial hierarchies.2
There are therefore crucial questions that need to be raised when addressing climate change and transitioning towards renewable energies in the region: What does a just response to climate change look like here? Does it mean the freedom to move to, and open borders with, Europe? Does it mean the payment of climate debt, restitution, and redistribution by Western governments, by multinational corporations, and by rich local elites? Does it mean a radical break with the capitalist system? What should happen to fossil fuel resources in the region that are extracted to a significant extent by Western corporations? Who should control and own renewable energy? What does adapting to a changing climate mean, and who will shape and benefit from it? And where are the key agents who will fight for meaningful change and radical transformation?
What is ‘just transition’?
The concept of ‘just transition’ has emerged as a framework that places justice at the centre of the discussion. It is usually traced back to the U.S. in the 1970s, when labour unions, local communities and other social movements sharing an interest in a liveable environment and decent, safe, and fairly paid work aligned against polluting industries and their unfair policies. Over the following decades, the concept was adopted by a range of social movements around the world who have built coalitions and shared visions of transformative solutions for the climate crisis that tackle underlying causes, and that put human rights, ecological regeneration, and people’s sovereignty at the centre.
A just transition is not a stand-alone concept but a field of contestation; a space where struggles about genuine responses to the climate crisis can be formulated and put into practice. Progressive social movements have an abiding conviction that people should not bear the heaviest costs of a sustainable transition. They should rather be the leading agents in shaping such a transition. From feminist and indigenous perspectives to regional and national programmes, movements are advancing their own definitions of both ‘justice’ and ‘transition’ in their diverse contexts.
For us, discussions of a just transition in North Africa and beyond must respond to the reality of unequal development caused by imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, a just transition must include radical transformations that increase the power of working people and reduce the power of capital and governing elites. We need to also recognise that environmental issues cannot be addressed without addressing the racist, sexist, and other oppressive structures of the capitalist economy and that the environmental crisis is much broader than just the climate crisis. Ultimately, a just transition cannot be achieved without transformations of political, as well as economic, power towards greater democratisation.
The concept of a just transition has been shaped partially by labour movements, so the question of decent work remains central to many serious proposal. The International Trade Union Confederation has dubbed the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region the worst in the world for workers’ rights, with systematic violations across the region. Across the Arab world, youth unemployment is almost twice the global average and about two-thirds of workers in North Africa are employed in the informal sector.
Today, the vast majority of humanity, regardless of the kind of work they do, are giving up some part of their essential daily consumption, their human rights, or their ability to live a dignified life in order to keep propping up the super-profits of transnational corporations. Whether this is because their food, health, energy and care systems have been privatised, putting the full burden of care on the family unit—because they have lost or are at risk of losing access to their lands, territories or fishing rights—or because they are unable to find work and struggle to make a living in an informal economy where they have no means to demand a living wage, the effects are the same. It is no coincidence that this precarious and exploited majority is also the group most at risk from climate change, and least able to protect themselves from its effects.
The dynamics are complex and obviously different across countries of North Africa, yet many shared challenges and questions also emerge from an exploration of what would a just transition look like: Whose needs and rights should be prioritized in an energy transition? What model of energy production, and extraction, can deliver energy to all working people? How are Northern countries and International Financial Institutions forcing the region into shouldering the burden of the energy transition, and what would a more just solution look like? What role should states play in driving a just transition, and what are the possibilities for democratic control of state power for this transition? What alliances of working people are possible, and what role can international solidarity and resistance play in supporting these?
The dossier
In the various essays in Just Transition(s) in North Africa compiled by the Transnational Institute, the contributors initiate a deeper discussion of what just transition means in the context of North Africa and the Arab region.
Mohamed Gad debunks the World Bank’s claim that the liberalisation of electricity prices in Egypt ended subsidies to the rich and redirected resources towards the poor. Instead, he shows how it paved the way for the entry of international finance, at the expense of the poorest—radically turning a basic service into a commodity.
Jawad Moustakbal, in his article on the energy sector in Morocco, asks important questions including, who decides on, who benefits from, and who pays the price for Morocco’s so-called energy transition?
In their contribution on Tunisia, Chafik Ben Rouine and Flavie Roche show how the country’s energy transition plan relies heavily on privatisation and foreign funding, while neglecting democratic decision-making, situating the country firmly within the global neoliberal programme for the development of renewable energy.
In her article on Algeria, Imane Boukhatem highlights the opportunities, challenges and potential injustices facing the green energy transition in Algeria and argues that the country must rapidly transform its energy sector, with a core focus on social justice.
Mohamed Salah and Razaz Basheir, in their contribution on the electricity crisis in Sudan, they chart the evolution of the energy sector in the country since colonialism and attribute its uneven development to policies from that era and to their continuation in the post-colonial period.
Karen Rignall shows how solar energy is embedded in a long history of extraction in Morocco and reveals some of the striking continuities between fossil fuel commodity chains and those of renewable energies in the country.
In his article, Hamza Hamouchene shows how renewable energy engineering projects tend to present climate change as a problem that is common to the whole planet, without ever questioning the capitalist energy model or the historical responsibilities of the industrialized West.
Joanna Allan, Hamza Lakhal and Mahmoud Lemaadel, in highlighting how extractivism operates today in the part of Western Sahara currently occupied by Morocco, emphasize the voices of the Saharawi population and argue that current renewable energy projects in Western Sahara simply sustain and ‘greenwash’ colonialism, undermining a just transition that could benefit local communities.
Finally, Sakr El Nour, in his essay argues that countries in the region are subjected to unequal exchange with the Global North, particularly the EU, through trade agreements that enable the North to benefit from North African agricultural products at preferential rates. He contends that North Africa needs to recast its agricultural, environmental, food and energy policies.
Breaking with business as usual
It is increasingly clear that a just transition for North Africa requires a recognition of the historical responsibility of the industrialized West in causing global warming. It needs to acknowledge the role of power in shaping both how climate change is caused, and who carries the burden of its impacts and of solutions to the crisis. Climate justice and a just transition should mean breaking with business as usual that protects global political elites, multinational corporations, and autocratic regimes, while promoting a radical social and ecological transformation.
The imperatives of justice are increasingly leading to a consensus among activists on the need for climate reparations to be (re)paid to countries in the Global South by the rich North. This must take the form not of loans and additional debts but of massive transfers of wealth and technology, cancelling current odious debts, halting illicit capital flows, dismantling neo-colonial trade and investment agreements like the Energy Charter Treaty and stopping the ongoing plunder of resources. The financing of the transition needs to take into account the current, ongoing and future loss and destruction caused by the changing climate, which is occurring disproportionately in the South.
Yet since inequalities exist not only between North and South, but also within all countries of the world, how can a programme of climate reparations be combined with the creation of a just, democratic, and equitable energy system within the countries of North Africa?
In many ways, the climate crisis and the urgently required green transition offer us a chance to reshape international politics. Coping with the dramatic transformation of our climate will require a break with existing militarist, colonial and neoliberal projects. Therefore, the struggle for a just transition must be fiercely democratic. It must involve the communities who are most affected, and it must be geared towards providing for the needs of all. It means building a future in which working people have enough energy, and a clean and safe environment. Above all we must build a future that is in harmony with the revolutionary demands of the African and Arab uprisings: popular sovereignty, bread, freedom, and social justice.
This is a version of the introduction to the dossier Just Transition(s) in North Africa compiled by the Transnational Institute.
Hamza Hamouchene is the North Africa Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute. Ouafa Hiddioui is the North Africa Programme Assistant at the Transnational Institute. Katie Sandwell is the Agrarian and Environmental Justice Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute.
Notes:
1.↩ Amin, S. (1990) Delinking: Towards a polycentric world. Zed Books; Amin, S. (2013) The Implosion of Capitalism. Pluto Press. See also Rodney, W. (2012) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Pambazuka Press; and Galeano, E. (1973) Open Veins of Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.
2.↩ Hamouchene, H. (2019) ‘Extractivism and resistance in North Africa’. Transnational Institute; Riahi, L. and Hamouchene, H. (2020) ‘Deep and comprehensive dependency: how a trade agreement with the EU could devastate the Tunisian economy’. Transnational Institute.
https://mronline.org/2022/11/19/towards ... ing-order/
Illegal armed groups in Nigeria, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @StrawberryNG
Published 21 November 2022 (2 hours 51 minutes ago)
This initiative seeks to contain the advance of armed insurgents and the jihadist groups in Ghana, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, and Niger.
On Sunday, Ghanaian National Security Minister Albert Kan Dapaah announced that seven member states of the Accra Initiative are considering setting up a standby military force to deal with armed insurgencies within the region.
He disclosed this at a press briefing to throw more light on steps so far to protect the territorial integrity of member states and the subregion in general.
"We are seriously considering establishing a standby force, but the form it would take is still under consideration," Dapaah disclosed.
"Chiefs of defense staff from our states have been holding discussions on the details of the standby force, and once we are ready, we would inform the public on the form it would take," he said, disclosing that porous borders in the subregion and ungoverned spaces in the various countries were some of the key attractions to the armed insurgents and the jihadist groups.
"One of our key considerations is ensuring that there are not many ungoverned territories in our member countries. We will also make it difficult for the jihadists to radicalize youth in border communities," said Dapaah.
"Youth unemployment is one critical factor in radicalization. Our ability to handle youth unemployment in a more coordinated manner so that it does not become a threat to national and regional security will be key in dealing with the armed insurgencies in the member states," he said.
The Accra Initiative was established in 2017 to enhance intelligence and security cooperation among the member states, which include Ghana, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, and Niger.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Afr ... -0003.html
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Burkina Faso Confronts a Humanitarian Catsatrophe as Jihadists Besiege Cities
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 19, 2022
The government of Burkina Faso calls for calm, restraint and not to risk plunging the country into the maelstrom of demonstrations.
A political struggle at the service of jihadists
On Saturday, the government of Burkina Faso called on residents to “remain calm and exercise restraint” following a demonstration against the French presence in the country against a background of rumors that Russia supports the recent coup led by the young captain Ibrahim Traore (34), turning the conflict into a hidden battle of influence between Paris and Moscow.
This hidden conflict comes at a time when residents of cities besieged by jihadists are suffering from hunger and a clear government deficit.
“The government calls on the population for calm and restraint, and not to risk plunging our country into an endless cycle of demonstrations that offend our goals of peace, stability and security sought by our people,” government spokesman Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement.
He added that the government ” calls on young people in particular not to deviate and focus on defense goals in the comprehensive war we are waging against terrorism (…) instead of these demonstrations, the usefulness of which has not yet been proven on the cause of the struggle of our people.”
Jihadists consolidate their positions
رفض الوجود الفرنسي متواصل Burkina Faso security forces on Friday dispersed a demonstration in Ouagadougou in which hundreds of people protested against the presence of France, some waving Russian flags, saying they wanted their leaders to strengthen relations with Russia.
The demonstrators gathered at the United Nations roundabout in the heart of the capital and headed to the French embassy, some on motorcycles, to the campoinsin base on the outskirts of the capital, where France has a military presence within the sabre force.
The government of Burkina Faso stressed on Saturday that it “will not abandon the rules and principles of protection that it adheres to towards diplomats and diplomatic missions located on the territory of Burkina Faso”.
On October twenty-eighth, hundreds demonstrated to demand “France leave Burkina Faso within 72 hours”.
On the anniversary of the September thirtieth coup that brought Ibrahim Traore to power, who has since become interim president, demonstrators attacked French interests in Burkina Faso, including the embassy and two French institutes.
Moscow enjoys growing popular support in several French-speaking African countries, while the reputation of France, a former colonial power, is increasingly being tarnished, especially in Mali, a neighboring country of Burkina Faso, which has also been led by military coup since 2020.
In Burkina Faso, the ruling military council has not closed the door to rapprochement with Russia, but has not shown any hostility to France, which continues to support the Burkina Faso army in its fight against jihadists.
As Burkina Faso finds itself caught between France and Russia, residents of a large number of towns in the north of the country, NGOs and the authorities emphasize that the humanitarian situation is “catastrophic” and getting worse in this region besieged by jihadist groups.
Idrissa Badini, spokesman for a group of civil society organizations in the province of SOM and its capital, Jibo, said that “the situation is catastrophic” in this city, explaining that “hunger has reached a level that kills children and the elderly”.
He added that 15 people died of hunger in October in this city, which has been besieged by jihadists for months. ”There are probably more victims and not all of them have been reported”.
By blowing up bridges and launching deadly attacks against convoys supplying this large city in northern Burkina Faso, the jihadists have plunged Djibo and its region into destitution.
“All the shops are closed, ” said Slimane Diko, a resident of Djibo who moved to the capital Ouagadougou. There is nothing to eat and nothing to sell”. “Whether you are poor or rich, you cannot buy anything because the products are not available,”
“The worst thing is that in the dry season the leaves of trees or other herbs that we used to cut to boil are no longer available. People are starving. It is very difficult to supply the city by road, ” he explained in response to an AFP question. When we walk the wild road we realize that we are in the axis of death, the axis of Jibo – burzanga”.
Dozens of towns in Burkina Faso are facing the same conditions as in Djibo. About a million people are currently living in areas under siege.
Along this road, several convoys carrying supplies have been attacked recently. In September, 35 people, including children, were killed when a mine exploded while a truck carrying them was passing, while 11 soldiers were killed in another ambush targeting a convoy.
These supplies are essential. In many parts of the country, agricultural production has stopped and access to the fields is difficult due to insecurity.
Ibrahim Traore chose to go to Djibo on his first trip in the country at the beginning of November. He did not underestimate the seriousness of the situation.
“Go see the children whose skin has become glued to their bones, the elderly who are starving, and women who can no longer breastfeed because they have no milk left,” he said a few days ago in Ouagadougou to representatives of political parties and civil society organizations.
“Let’s not pretend” that everything is fine, he added, stressing that “this is happening, people are eating leaves of trees in order to survive. The situation is alarming ( … ) in a land that has almost been lost”.
For years, Jibo has become a gathering point for displaced residents of the northern regions who fled the jihadist violence of groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Its population has tripled and today it is estimated at about 300 thousand people. But at the moment, some are trying to flee south to the capital Ouagadougou.
“After being deprived of water, food, medicine and a telephone network, many are leaving Jibo on foot at night in the hope of reaching areas that are still accessible,” said one humanitarian worker, requesting anonymity.
The United Nations says dozens of towns in Burkina Faso are facing the same conditions as in Djibo. About one million people currently live in areas under siege in the north or east of the country.
Idrissa Badini cites the example of the town of arbinda, located east of Djibo, where tens of thousands of people from neighboring areas gathered to escape the attacks.
“The regular land convoys that used to provide the population with food and living materials have stopped and nothing is reaching Arbinda anymore,” he said. “The population, which has exhausted its reserves, is about to face a humanitarian catastrophe,” he added.
Despite the attacks, supplies have recently resumed. At the end of October, the army transported seventy tons of grain by air to the city of Jibo, which then provided it by land on the second and third of November with more than 300 tons of food, according to the General Staff. Seven mines were deactivated en route.
“We have managed to supply some villages, but the supply of other villages has not yet been completed,” said Captain Traore.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), some 3.5 million people will need emergency food assistance in the coming months in Burkina Faso.
Al Arab
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“South Africa’s ‘Just’ Transition climate deal with the west is a betrayal of the working class”
South Africa is set to implement an $8.5bn plan funded by western countries to transition from coal-based energy to renewables. The country’s biggest union NUMSA has warned this plan will only intensify privatization while burdening South Africans with debt and poverty.
November 20, 2022 by Tanupriya Singh
President Cyril Ramaphosa and the International Partners Group at the JET Investment Plan meeting on the sidelines of COP27. Photo: @PresidencyZA/Twitter
During the World Leaders Summit at COP27, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP).
The plan is the product of a process that began a year ago at COP26, when the US, the UK, France, Germany, and the European Union, collectively called the International Partners Group (IPG), announced the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with South Africa.
The JETP set a lofty goal — “to accelerate the decarbonization of South Africa’s economy, with a focus on the electricity system” to help it reduce harmful emissions as set out in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.
However, progressive forces have warned that the plan will have a disastrous impact on working class communities, especially those dependent on the coal sector for their livelihood, while driving a massive privatization of South Africa’s energy sector.
Presenting the Investment Plan on November 7, President Ramaphosa stated that South Africa would need $98 billion over the next five years to enable a just transition. The plan identified three priority sectors for investments: electricity, green hydrogen, and new energy vehicles. The Plan was endorsed by South Africa’s Cabinet on October 19.
For its first phase, the IPG is ‘mobilizing’ $8.5 billion including “grants, concessional loans, and investments and risk sharing instruments” from both public and commercial lenders. According to an official statement, the funding will be geared towards coal plant decommissioning, funding alternative employment in coal mining areas, investments towards renewable energy, and new sectors of the green economy.
$2.6 billion will be allocated through the Climate Investment Funds Accelerating Coal Transition Investment Plan, $1 billion each from the US, EU, France, and Germany, and $1.8 billion from the UK.
“A ‘Just’ approach underpins the Plan,” a joint statement declared, “aiming to ensure that those most directly affected by a transition from coal – workers and communities including women and girls – are not left behind.”
How is the JETP actually approaching just transition in South Africa — by pushing a country where over 55% of people are already living in poverty and 46% are unemployed further into debt? Only around 4% of the IPG funding package is in the form of grants. 81% is loans.
Not only that, nearly 90% of the financing is geared solely towards infrastructure. Skill development and economic diversification and innovation, which would undergird any commitment to justice in the JET-IP, have been allocated only 0.1% and 0.3% of the financing respectively.
Privatization and energy poverty in South Africa
On paper, nearly 85% of South Africa’s population has access to electricity. However, rolling blackouts or loadshedding and high prices have effectively placed it out of reach for millions in the country.
Instead of developing and properly managing the state-owned, and coal-power dependent, utility company ESKOM, the South African government has chosen the path of austerity and privatization.
“By virtue of it being a state-owned entity, ESKOM can drive a developmental agenda, which means that by its very nature, it should not be making profit, rather it should be creating space for the provision of affordable and reliable electricity. If it was well-run, it would be able to do that,” the national spokesperson for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, told Peoples Dispatch.
“ESKOM’s challenges have everything to do with poor governance and the African National Congress’ own policies of dumping our state owned entities (SOEs).”
The Institute of Economic Justice points out further that the JET-IP deal relies heavily on using funds to ‘de-risk’ private investment. Moreover, financing is “tied to the expansion of private-sector energy generation, through lock-ins and demand agreements, which will likely raise the cost of energy provision thereby limiting access and exacerbating energy poverty.”
It added that the plan ignored “energy affordability concerns,” focusing instead on access to the grid as a means to reduce energy poverty. The JET-IP emphasizes “cost-reflective tariffs,” which the institute argues will lead to continued high electricity prices and restrict cross-subsidization for the poor.
As Hlubi-Majola stated, “There is no privately-owned company that will care about providing affordable energy for all, for the poor and the indigent. That is not the goal… their goal is to drive profit.”
“Despite the public perception that the accelerated drive toward renewable energy is fueled by climate change,” argues engineer and researcher Brian Kamanzi, “the reality is that it is primarily driven by imperatives to implement private sector reform in the power generation sector. This is done by leveraging the advances in renewable energy systems.”
This is clearly evidenced by the fact that, as NUMSA points out, the government’s plan says nothing about the future of ESKOM— “ESKOM’s role seemingly is simply to enable the private sector to access the grid, but it will not have any direct role in providing renewable energy to the population.”
A major share of new investment will be private and in the form of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Program (REIPPP). NUMSA had tried to block its rollout in 2018, arguing that its introduction would mean that coal-fired power stations would be shut down to make way for privately-owned renewable energy companies.
Even though the government has committed to shutting down power stations, Hlubi-Majola stated that affected communities had not been meaningfully engaged — “This is a total violation of the principles of a just energy transition as defined by the International Labor Organization which stipulates that communities and workers must be the ones to not only drive the consultation process, but also that they must be the ones to define the resulting plan because that plan must benefit them directly.”
“What we have seen instead is the government embarking on a box-ticking exercise after already beginning the process of shutting down power stations.”
An estimated 124,000 jobs would be lost by 2030 in an escalated decommissioning of ESKOM. 8,000 people in Mpumalanga in the coal belt would directly lose their jobs, not to mention families and communities that would be impacted in a myriad other ways. There is no social plan in place for them. According to NUMSA, 12 out of ESKOM’s 15 coal-fired power stations are located in the region.
ESKOM has already started leasing the land around its power stations in Mpumalanga to renewable energy companies. It employs approximately 30,000 people across the country.
Looking at the REIPPP more specifically, Hlubi-Majola added, “Earlier this year, when ESKOM was making an application to the national energy regulator, NERSA, to increase its tariffs, it stated in its submissions that a big part of the increases was a result of the cost of the REIPPs. These REIPPs are a part of ESKOM’s cost burden.”
“ESKOM is spending a large portion of the money it has on exorbitant primary energy costs which, for over the last 10 years have increased by 17% year by year.The REIPPs are a part of these primary energy costs which are choking ESKOM and choking the consumer.”
“You are not even future-proofing your own state-owned entity to play an important role in this climate change scenario…t is a mistake for the South African government to hand over this process of transitioning from coal to renewable energy [from ESKOM] to the private sector and hoping that the private sector will miraculously deliver on a developmental agenda,” Hlubi-Majola had earlier emphasized in an interview with Breakthrough News.
“By handing over ESKOM in this way, basically destroying its future and enabling and allowing the private sector to play a greater role in energy generation, the government is betraying the working class. They are guaranteeing that South Africans remain poor, that the country’s status as the most unequal in the world continues for generations to come,” she told Peoples Dispatch.
“We have a duty to ensure that our SOEs play a direct role in empowering the working class and the masses. Unfortunately, the South African government has been reading from the playbook of the World Bank and other international financial institutions who have been driving an agenda of neoliberalism and privatization”
A just transition for the people, not profit
Even as the global South is already bearing the historically unjust burden of the climate crisis, industrialized countries of the North seem to be moving backwards, re-opening coal plants to secure their own energy supplies while touting the importance of a just climate transition on the international level.
“You cannot industrialize your economy based on renewable energy alone because it is an intermittent form of energy, you need a base load supply that is either coal or nuclear.” Hlubi-Majola explained. “Even as Germany is reopening its coal plants, South Africa is closing them down. Germany is not the one facing frequent blackouts.”
“Load shedding has cost South Africa’s economy over $4 billion rand (US$2.3 billion) in 2022 alone.This has a direct impact on our economic outlook. If we are serious about job creation, about building the economy and absorbing the unemployed, we must industrialize. Unfortunately, the renewable energy plants are not labor-intensive.”
Despite the fact that all of Africa has contributed a miniscule portion of global carbon emissions, Hlubi-Majola asked, why are countries on the continent “racing to implement a transition which we know objectively is very disruptive and will result in more poverty and unemployment. Why are we doing more than those who are actually responsible for this climate crisis?” Especially when there is no plan in place to mitigate the effects of the JETP deal on local communities.
The importance of a just transition is not lost on the global South, where communities at the frontlines have been fighting for survival for decades. The question is what does a truly just transition look like?
For years, NUMSA has been calling for a ‘socially-owned renewable energy sector’.
“When you look at the JET-IP, there is no ownership component for the benefit of workers or communities,” Hlubi-Majola noted importantly, “they are not talking about renewable energy companies that are owned through cooperatives.”
“For us, a just transition would have been one that allowed workers and communities of Mpumalanga, who stand to lose the most from this deal, ownership of renewable energy companies. The technology that is being used should be owned by South Africa… How do we stand to benefit from this deal when there is going to be so much disruption and displacement for ordinary workers and their families?” she asked.
“The only people who stand to benefit are a minority of the elite. Among the biggest beneficiaries is Patrice Mostepe, who is related to President Ramaphosa through marriage, and whose firm won 12 out the 25 renewable energy plans.”
A just transition, Hlubi-Majola stressed, would have been one where “ESKOM (an SOE) would control at least 70% of the renewable energy space in this country. In doing so, you would have safeguarded the jobs of the thousands of workers at ESKOM, you would also be transforming it from the coal-guzzling, polluting entity that it is to one that is contributing to tackling climate change directly.”
“They must stop perverting the term just transition. There is nothing just about this current process.”
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People gather in Tahrir Square, Cairo, 2011 to call for an end to sectarian divides and support for Palestine (Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr commons license).
Towards a just transition: breaking with the existing order
Originally published: ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy) on November 15, 2022 by Hamza Hamouchene, Ouafa Haddioui and Katie Sandwell (more by ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy)) | (Posted Nov 19, 2022)
The mainstream narratives on the climate change, the ecological crisis and the energy transition in North Africa are still dominated by international neoliberal institutions, whose analyses are biased and exclude questions of class, race, gender, justice, power, or colonial history. Their proposed solutions do not address the root causes of the climate, ecological, food and energy crises. The knowledge produced by such institutions is profoundly disempowering and overlooks oppression and resistance, focusing largely on the advice of ‘experts’, to the exclusion of voices from below.
The historical, political, and geophysical realities of the North Africa region mean that both the effects of and the solutions to the climate crisis there will be distinct from those in other contexts. North Africa was forcibly integrated into the global capitalist economy in a subordinate position: colonial powers influenced or forced North African countries to structure their economies around the extraction and export of resources—usually provided cheaply and in raw form—coupled with the import of high-value industrial goods. The result was large-scale transfer of wealth to the imperial centres, at the expense of local development.1
The persistence today of such unequal and asymmetric relations reaffirms the role of North African countries as exporters of natural resources, such as oil and gas, and primary commodities that are heavily dependent on water and land, such as monoculture cash crops. This entrenches an outward-looking extractivist economy, exacerbating food dependency and the ecological crisis while maintaining relations of imperialist domination and neo-colonial hierarchies.2
There are therefore crucial questions that need to be raised when addressing climate change and transitioning towards renewable energies in the region: What does a just response to climate change look like here? Does it mean the freedom to move to, and open borders with, Europe? Does it mean the payment of climate debt, restitution, and redistribution by Western governments, by multinational corporations, and by rich local elites? Does it mean a radical break with the capitalist system? What should happen to fossil fuel resources in the region that are extracted to a significant extent by Western corporations? Who should control and own renewable energy? What does adapting to a changing climate mean, and who will shape and benefit from it? And where are the key agents who will fight for meaningful change and radical transformation?
What is ‘just transition’?
The concept of ‘just transition’ has emerged as a framework that places justice at the centre of the discussion. It is usually traced back to the U.S. in the 1970s, when labour unions, local communities and other social movements sharing an interest in a liveable environment and decent, safe, and fairly paid work aligned against polluting industries and their unfair policies. Over the following decades, the concept was adopted by a range of social movements around the world who have built coalitions and shared visions of transformative solutions for the climate crisis that tackle underlying causes, and that put human rights, ecological regeneration, and people’s sovereignty at the centre.
A just transition is not a stand-alone concept but a field of contestation; a space where struggles about genuine responses to the climate crisis can be formulated and put into practice. Progressive social movements have an abiding conviction that people should not bear the heaviest costs of a sustainable transition. They should rather be the leading agents in shaping such a transition. From feminist and indigenous perspectives to regional and national programmes, movements are advancing their own definitions of both ‘justice’ and ‘transition’ in their diverse contexts.
For us, discussions of a just transition in North Africa and beyond must respond to the reality of unequal development caused by imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, a just transition must include radical transformations that increase the power of working people and reduce the power of capital and governing elites. We need to also recognise that environmental issues cannot be addressed without addressing the racist, sexist, and other oppressive structures of the capitalist economy and that the environmental crisis is much broader than just the climate crisis. Ultimately, a just transition cannot be achieved without transformations of political, as well as economic, power towards greater democratisation.
The concept of a just transition has been shaped partially by labour movements, so the question of decent work remains central to many serious proposal. The International Trade Union Confederation has dubbed the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region the worst in the world for workers’ rights, with systematic violations across the region. Across the Arab world, youth unemployment is almost twice the global average and about two-thirds of workers in North Africa are employed in the informal sector.
Today, the vast majority of humanity, regardless of the kind of work they do, are giving up some part of their essential daily consumption, their human rights, or their ability to live a dignified life in order to keep propping up the super-profits of transnational corporations. Whether this is because their food, health, energy and care systems have been privatised, putting the full burden of care on the family unit—because they have lost or are at risk of losing access to their lands, territories or fishing rights—or because they are unable to find work and struggle to make a living in an informal economy where they have no means to demand a living wage, the effects are the same. It is no coincidence that this precarious and exploited majority is also the group most at risk from climate change, and least able to protect themselves from its effects.
The dynamics are complex and obviously different across countries of North Africa, yet many shared challenges and questions also emerge from an exploration of what would a just transition look like: Whose needs and rights should be prioritized in an energy transition? What model of energy production, and extraction, can deliver energy to all working people? How are Northern countries and International Financial Institutions forcing the region into shouldering the burden of the energy transition, and what would a more just solution look like? What role should states play in driving a just transition, and what are the possibilities for democratic control of state power for this transition? What alliances of working people are possible, and what role can international solidarity and resistance play in supporting these?
The dossier
In the various essays in Just Transition(s) in North Africa compiled by the Transnational Institute, the contributors initiate a deeper discussion of what just transition means in the context of North Africa and the Arab region.
Mohamed Gad debunks the World Bank’s claim that the liberalisation of electricity prices in Egypt ended subsidies to the rich and redirected resources towards the poor. Instead, he shows how it paved the way for the entry of international finance, at the expense of the poorest—radically turning a basic service into a commodity.
Jawad Moustakbal, in his article on the energy sector in Morocco, asks important questions including, who decides on, who benefits from, and who pays the price for Morocco’s so-called energy transition?
In their contribution on Tunisia, Chafik Ben Rouine and Flavie Roche show how the country’s energy transition plan relies heavily on privatisation and foreign funding, while neglecting democratic decision-making, situating the country firmly within the global neoliberal programme for the development of renewable energy.
In her article on Algeria, Imane Boukhatem highlights the opportunities, challenges and potential injustices facing the green energy transition in Algeria and argues that the country must rapidly transform its energy sector, with a core focus on social justice.
Mohamed Salah and Razaz Basheir, in their contribution on the electricity crisis in Sudan, they chart the evolution of the energy sector in the country since colonialism and attribute its uneven development to policies from that era and to their continuation in the post-colonial period.
Karen Rignall shows how solar energy is embedded in a long history of extraction in Morocco and reveals some of the striking continuities between fossil fuel commodity chains and those of renewable energies in the country.
In his article, Hamza Hamouchene shows how renewable energy engineering projects tend to present climate change as a problem that is common to the whole planet, without ever questioning the capitalist energy model or the historical responsibilities of the industrialized West.
Joanna Allan, Hamza Lakhal and Mahmoud Lemaadel, in highlighting how extractivism operates today in the part of Western Sahara currently occupied by Morocco, emphasize the voices of the Saharawi population and argue that current renewable energy projects in Western Sahara simply sustain and ‘greenwash’ colonialism, undermining a just transition that could benefit local communities.
Finally, Sakr El Nour, in his essay argues that countries in the region are subjected to unequal exchange with the Global North, particularly the EU, through trade agreements that enable the North to benefit from North African agricultural products at preferential rates. He contends that North Africa needs to recast its agricultural, environmental, food and energy policies.
Breaking with business as usual
It is increasingly clear that a just transition for North Africa requires a recognition of the historical responsibility of the industrialized West in causing global warming. It needs to acknowledge the role of power in shaping both how climate change is caused, and who carries the burden of its impacts and of solutions to the crisis. Climate justice and a just transition should mean breaking with business as usual that protects global political elites, multinational corporations, and autocratic regimes, while promoting a radical social and ecological transformation.
The imperatives of justice are increasingly leading to a consensus among activists on the need for climate reparations to be (re)paid to countries in the Global South by the rich North. This must take the form not of loans and additional debts but of massive transfers of wealth and technology, cancelling current odious debts, halting illicit capital flows, dismantling neo-colonial trade and investment agreements like the Energy Charter Treaty and stopping the ongoing plunder of resources. The financing of the transition needs to take into account the current, ongoing and future loss and destruction caused by the changing climate, which is occurring disproportionately in the South.
Yet since inequalities exist not only between North and South, but also within all countries of the world, how can a programme of climate reparations be combined with the creation of a just, democratic, and equitable energy system within the countries of North Africa?
In many ways, the climate crisis and the urgently required green transition offer us a chance to reshape international politics. Coping with the dramatic transformation of our climate will require a break with existing militarist, colonial and neoliberal projects. Therefore, the struggle for a just transition must be fiercely democratic. It must involve the communities who are most affected, and it must be geared towards providing for the needs of all. It means building a future in which working people have enough energy, and a clean and safe environment. Above all we must build a future that is in harmony with the revolutionary demands of the African and Arab uprisings: popular sovereignty, bread, freedom, and social justice.
This is a version of the introduction to the dossier Just Transition(s) in North Africa compiled by the Transnational Institute.
Hamza Hamouchene is the North Africa Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute. Ouafa Hiddioui is the North Africa Programme Assistant at the Transnational Institute. Katie Sandwell is the Agrarian and Environmental Justice Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute.
Notes:
1.↩ Amin, S. (1990) Delinking: Towards a polycentric world. Zed Books; Amin, S. (2013) The Implosion of Capitalism. Pluto Press. See also Rodney, W. (2012) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Pambazuka Press; and Galeano, E. (1973) Open Veins of Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.
2.↩ Hamouchene, H. (2019) ‘Extractivism and resistance in North Africa’. Transnational Institute; Riahi, L. and Hamouchene, H. (2020) ‘Deep and comprehensive dependency: how a trade agreement with the EU could devastate the Tunisian economy’. Transnational Institute.
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