Africa may be the answer to Europe’s immediate gas problem and its longer-term carbon one. It has 13% of global gas reserves, 7% of the world’s oil and vast green-energy potential
are being rocked by an unprecedented double-whammy. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Europe has cut energy imports from Russia, the world’s second-largest producer of natural gas and third-largest oil producer. Prices of both shot up before falling back, but anxiety persists about energy security. Meanwhile climate change is prompting a deep but uncertain shift away from fossil fuels such as oil and, eventually, gas.
The activity marks a sharp change in the prevailing mood over the past few decades, when Africa had dwindled in importance to energy markets. A continent that once provided a fifth of the world’s internationally tradednow provides half that share. Its shares of global oil and coal production have also fallen as investors in oil, in particular, have been put off by deteriorating security in Nigeria, usually the continent’s biggest producer.
Africa has punched below its weight mainly because it has been hard to export green energy. Investments were made mainly for local consumption of electricity and even privately owned power producers often struggled to make money because they supplied small markets through inefficient state-owned utilities.
Africa’s strong solar and wind potential make it an attractive place to produce green hydrogen. A recent study by the European Investment Bank , the’s development bank, argues that Africa could produce 50m tonnes of the stuff a year by 2035 from three subregions: Egypt; Mauritania and Morocco; and Namibia and South Africa. About half of this could be for export.
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