Vanessa Nakate says fighting climate change can cut poverty in Africa?

From the Economist. Probably paywalled, not up to TE's usual standards of thinking; more on the lines of wishful handwaving.

Samples:

Africa receives only 2% of global investment in renewables, even though the continent possesses 39% of the world’s potential for renewable energy.

This is stupid. There's no reason to expect proportionality with potential. What you'd expect is that investment in energy infrastructure, and renewables, would be proportional to wealth. Since Africa is pretty poor, you'd expect low levels of investment. If there were free flows of capital, and reliable enforcement of law, and non-corrupt government, then you would perhaps expect more investment to flow towards opportunities. But of course the article steers well clear of any hard-to-deal-with issues like corruption and lawlessness.

Countries, development banks and private institutions in the global North, where development was propelled by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, including fuels from Africa, now need to answer the calls for investment.

This is muddy at best. She wants money, obviously, but the rationale for it coming from the North is unclear: something-something-history. As the article makes clear, although GW is an excellent reason to switch to renewables, for much of Africa an even better reason is decentralisation; and "Electricity from solar and wind is, and will continue to be, cheaper than electricity from gas—and its prices are not, for the most part, subject to such dangerous fluctuations". But those reasons, which are the most important, don't carry any particular responsibility from the West.

Refs

* The flower of poor thinking is to lack influence.

* The flower of justice is peace.

Text

Since it is paywalled, you may want the text: it is here.