African economies suffer at least three structural deficiencies that constrain development potential:

• • a lack of food sovereignty;
  • a lack of energy sovereignty; and
  • low-value-added content of exports relative to imports.

These deficiencies in turn contribute to structural trade deficits, weakened African currencies and pressure to issue debt denominated in foreign currencies, resulting in more indebtedness.

Faced with depreciating currencies and rising import prices, African governments typically resort to subsidising necessities and artificially maintaining exchange rates by accumulating more debt. The vicious cycle deepens.

Africa’s structural crises are rooted in its history. Colonialism moulded Africa’s economies and societies to meet the labour and material needs of Western industrialisation and development. 

Post-colonial efforts to correct these imbalances, increase independence and nurture infant industries were curbed by energy crises, indebtedness and structural adjustment policies.

Today African countries continue to depend on exporting primary products, resulting in economies that are fragile, vulnerable to shocks, and highly dependent on external factors. 

Access by every citizen to nutritious, abundant, affordable and culturally appropriate food is a central objective of development. Africans can achieve food sovereignty by shifting away from export-oriented, cash-crop, industrial agriculture that has left Africa hungry, towards community-based agro-ecological systems that provide nutritious food, sustained yields, secure livelihoods, and climate resilience.

A second step is to escape the post-colonial trap of prioritising extractive industries, assembly-line manufacturing and low-value-added exports through a pan-African industrial policy that develops African resources and human capacities, expands internal markets and economies of scale, and prioritises strategic investments, planning and partnerships that enhance opportunity, generate employment, and secure a greater share of the benefits for Africans.

More resilient agriculture and industrial systems must be powered with energy, and Africa has an unprecedented opportunity to leapfrog the dirty and obsolete energy systems of the past towards more modern, people-centred, decentralised renewable energy systems.

To break free from these traps, and manage a rapidly changing external context, Africa needs a renaissance of endogenous ideas and leadership.

Building on existing plans, such as Agenda 2063, can renew a vision of genuine people-centred development, framed in terms of African values and cultures, focused on meeting the needs of every African, and centred on social justice, feminist values, and meaningful progress.

Africa’s vision for itself can be complemented by a more assertive international role, including South-South collaboration and self-reliance, more robust engagement in geopolitics, and systematic reform of the international architecture to address African and global challenges.

Energy plays a fundamental role across multiple sectors. The choices Africa makes about energy systems will determine many other aspects of development. Fit for purpose, modern and low-carbon, a new model of energy provision must address a number of important factors.

The system must provide accessible, affordable, reliable and sustainable energy to around 600 million Africans that currently lack access to electricity as an overriding priority for development.

To achieve this goal, Africa will need to move away from outmoded models based on centralised infrastructure, towards more modern, integrated energy solutions that take advantage of Africa’s massive renewable energy potential.

The new energy system will embody a number of key principles and approaches that underpin a new African energy vision, including:

• • Ensuring African ownership and agency in energy initiatives and plans
  • Integrating energy systems design into wider development objectives and planning
  • Establishing clear policy priorities, such as support for clean cooking and diversification of energy generation and ownership
  • Provide scope for the delivery of energy as a common good and to genuinely foster energy democratisation
  • Ensuring stakeholder participation, equity and sufficiency in terms of energy use

Many mainstream “development policies” masquerade as solutions to these problems, but are in fact structural traps that exacerbate the crisis.

Measures to increase low-value-added exports, increase tourism or encourage foreign investment often increase importation of costly food, fuel, intermediate inputs and capital equipment. Outbound immigration to increase remittances worsens the brain-drain. Liberalisation of financial services invites speculation and instability. Privatisation generates revenues for foreign entities that are repatriated abroad.

Government subsidies, tax-cuts and weak regulations to attract transnational corporations, in turn, result in a race to the bottom for African and other developing countries. Compounded by tax evasion, the result is a deluge of wealth transfer from Global South to North — upwards of USD two trillion per year.

Added to these development traps are a host of new false solutions framed as responses to the climate and energy crisis — carbon markets, carbon capture and storage, geo-engineering.

The scale of resources required is unprecedented. The dominant narrative is that Africa lacks the resources, and so will need to borrow more to fund the transition.

In fact, as well as addressing the highlighted structural traps, African governments have a range of tools at hand to enhance the generation of domestic resources over time. One is to address the lack productive capacity — such as skilled labour, technical know-how, capital equipment — to begin scaling up domestic production without adding to the need for external inputs and debt.

Complementing this is the creation of more accountable markets and institutions, by addressing market concentration and abusive practices that misallocate resources and corrupt institutions.

While addressing internal factors, African countries can act in concert to address a range of external factors by calling for:

• • Scaling up of finance through existing mechanisms such as multilateral climate funds
  • Initiating new measures such as global programs to support renewable energy deployment
  • Deploying innovative financial sources such as financial transaction taxes, redirection of subsidies and special drawing rights (SDRs)
  • The systematic cancellation of unfair and odious debts
  • Improved regulation of transnational corporations and tax evasion
  • Reform of imbalanced and unfair international rules on trade, investment and technology
  • Reform of the international financial architecture, drawing on historical processes such as the New International Economic Order, and new ones such as the Bridgetown Initiative
  • Reparations for colonial atrocities, biopiracy and the appropriation of cultural heritage