The United Nations (UN) has persistently warned that climate change is the biggest major threat to humanity.
Global warming and rising sea temperatures are rapidly shifting climate dynamics resulting in climatic unpredictability, droughts, floods, extensive humanitarian crises, loss of life, and destruction of economic infrastructure.
Many leaders and civil society formations have called for urgent decarbonisation and sustainable green economic transition that secures prosperity for all in the face growing threat of industrial emissions which largely contribute to global warming, and surging climate-induced disasters.
African countries are pressed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals, and the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063, due to a lack of finance for green transition and ballooning debt which constrain resources to address climate change.
However, the consolidation of Africa-China relations within the frameworks of the Forum for Africa-China Cooperation (FOCAC), the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the BRICS+, and bilateral relations with all African countries rooted in mutually beneficial win-win relations, historical solidarity, and commitment to share the gains of modernisation provide a strong foundation for transformative green transition in Africa-China relations.
While sustainable green economic transition could provide new opportunities for economic growth and development, Africans should navigate major paradoxes between access to clean energy and industrialisation beyond traditional manufacturing that early industrial nations pursued their modernisation.
African countries and many developing countries only contribute less than 5% of the world’s greenhouse emissions, predominantly rely on fossil energy, and have fallen behind in green economic transition, yet they are the most vulnerable and exposed to vicious climate-induced disasters.
Green economic transition requires large investments in new clean energy, a shift towards green manufacturing and services driven by expensive new technologies and sophisticated strong policy and strategic capacities, as well as climate mitigation and resilience.
A report from the International Renewable Energy Agency published in 2022 says that only 2% of global investment in renewable energy over the past two decades has been made in Africa.
This lethargy in international funding has generated and deepened international inequality, widening a new green divide between rich and poorer developing countries, especially African countries.
Major powers could share their experience and technical know-how to integrate the African continent into global green supply and value chains while continuing to import rare earth components and critical mineral resources.
Utilising Africa’s 1.4 billion population as a booming market for green products could build continental climate adaptation, integrating Africa into rapidly changing patterns of manufacturing and provision of services will boost economic growth and development within the continent.
African countries account for about 30% of the global mix of rare-earth and critical minerals much of which are exported to produce green energy technologies abroad. Given that 40% of the population in Africa does not have access to energy, and the continental potential to produce solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro-electricity, the continent has both the necessary natural resources, and a huge market for green energy and other products.
Countries like South Africa, the DRC, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe amongst others, have an assortment of key rare earth, critical minerals, and water that could contribute to the production of solar, nuclear, wind, and hydro-electricity.
The Inga Dam project in the DRC, dubbed the world’s biggest power project, could produce 40 gigawatts to provide clean energy across the whole African continent. The project has stalled for decades due to lack of funding.
In 2014, the World Bank (WB), together with other partners undertook to finance the project. However, in 2016, the WB suspended its funding over the “strategic direction”, the project had taken, before reviving its interest in 2023.
In the prospect of US president-elect Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the COP process when he takes office for a second time in January, developing countries could look to China as one global power that could multilaterally drive the climate change agenda.
The Trump administration is sceptical of climate change, and has previously said climate action is a “scam”. It recently vowed to boost US oil production beyond its current record levels.
To draw parallels, China made public details of its climate funding, policies, and plans during the COP 29 meetings, showing that since 2016 suggesting that Beijing provided developing countries with more than $24 billion for climate action since 2016.
This may also suggest that as the world’s biggest economy rolls back its support for climate change, the second biggest economy, which is also the number one development partner with Africa is set to take a more central role in the future with tectonic shift to locate the interests of the global south at the COP processes.
Not only has China emerged as a trusted bilateral and multilateral partner with the requisite political will to forge strong cooperation with the global south, Chinese firms and transnational networks are breaking new ground in innovation, sharing their experiences, resources, including finance and technologies to drive green economic transition in Africa and the rest of the developing world.
China is Africa’s long-standing and largest trading partner. Speaking during the FOCAC summit, in Beijing in September 2024, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarked that China-Africa partnership could drive renewable energy revolution.
He emphasised that China’s partnership with the African continent is the main pillar of South-South cooperation, underscoring the fact that joint efforts, based on the Charter of the United Nations, can create new momentum for African development. South-South cooperation is essential to build capacities and drive progress on shared development goals.
China-Africa multilateral cooperation under FOCAC, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the BRICS+ countries seek to foster and consolidate climate mitigation and economic green transition strategies in ways that should drive green economic transformation in Africa and the rest of the developing world.
The FOCAC Beijing Action Plan (2025-2027) proposed increased cooperation in several interlinked economic sectors to boost climate change economic cooperation. The plan prioritises cooperation in infrastructure and connectivity, investment and industrial and supply chain cooperation, science and technology cooperation, knowledge sharing, energy, climate change, and ecological protection, among others.
Furthermore, Beijing has signed 18 memorandums of understanding on climate cooperation with 16 African nations and, in 2021, joined African countries and the African Union Commission in endorsing a joint declaration to establish a new era of strategic cooperation to combat climate change.
The Global Development Initiative (GDI) could render more impetus to Sustainable Development Goals while enhancing green development promoting integrity-based cooperation in line with the expressed ethos and aspirations of the Belt and Road Initiative BRI and FOCAC.
Such cooperation could assist African countries to evolve out of merely exporting rare earth and critical mineral resources to processing and manufacturing new technologies, participating in global supply and value chains by refocusing their economies towards much-needed services.
China has made a great leap in green transition to become a major producer of green technologies, lowering the cost of green technologies by 50% within a decade. For instance, the world’s top 10solar PV manufacturing equipment suppliers are all located in China.
As the global solar council reports, over the last five years, the price of solar panels has fallen by 50%, and in 2023 alone there was a further 42% price fall.
The Nairobi declaration on renewable energy for Africa calls on the continent to raise its renewable energy capacity from 59 GW to 300 GW by 2030. Other than hydroelectricity, solar energy has probably the best potential to close the gap in the need and demand for energy in Africa. In 2022, the African continent only produced about 56 GW of renewable energy in total.
China supported green energy-related projects ranging from building the energy in EPC projects, finance, and loans, or co-financing in the form of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), producing an additional 27 GW in clean energy within three years.
From December 2021, about 122 climate-related projects in Africa were delivered with some sort of input and support from Chinese stakeholders, of which 61% were solar projects, and 37% were hydro projects, with a total installation capacity of around 27 GW expected to be delivered once completed.
There are strong ties between Africa, China, and the rest of the global south. At this critical moment, China is in the right place to drive mutually beneficial green innovation and economic transformation with Africa, closely cooperating in combating climate change.
Gideon Chitanga is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for China Africa Studies, University of Johannesburg.