The number of homes with refrigerators would jump from 80 million to 200 million. A billion people would no longer cook with wood and charcoal, using clean energy instead. Homes would have fewer toxic fumes. Four million more people would have jobs building a continent-wide energy grid. Trade would be stronger, and on fairer terms.
But many of these resources get dug up and sent overseas. In the past decade, 70% of the investment in oil and gas was by multinational fossil fuel companies. These resources get sold back to Africa at higher cost. Getting there would see Africa’s power capacity doubling by 2030, from 260 gigawatts to 510GW. Two thirds of this would be renewable, mostly from new hydroelectric projects and also wind and solar panels.
In global terms, this isn’t much money. The $25-billion annual new energy investment is about how much other regions spend on energy. It’s also the price of just one of the liquefied natural gas terminals that Germany is building to escape its reliance on Russia.