MADRID, Spain - Choices made today on how to grow Africa's economies will determine not only if the continent prospers but if global warming can be tamed, diplomats and experts told AFP at UN climate talks in Madrid.
Remove South Africa and the oil- and gas-fuelled economies of north Africa from the picture, and the share of CO2 pollution drops to 1%. "The continent is on the cusp of sweeping development that can either go down a clean energy path, or one based on fossil fuels."As that transformation unfolds, Africa will accomodate at least half the projected global population growth over the next 30 years, according to the UN.For Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, senior negotiator at the climate talks for the Democratic Republic of Congo, the path Africa takes depends heavily on the help it gets from other countries and international institutions.
In many regions, the resources most readily available to fuel the growth that can satisfy those needs are the same ones overheating the planet.On the one hand, Egypt has almost completed the world's largest solar park, with funding from the World Bank's investment arm, the International Finance Corporation.
"Many of these projects would come online in the next five to ten years -- locking the countries into coal use precisely at the time when prices for solar and wind power are projected to fall below coal power."