What is Good for the Goose Isn’t Always Good for the Gander: Could the Clean Energy Revolution Exacerbate Environmental Injustice in Africa?
By Billy Agwanda
The clean energy revolution has been framed as an ecological and developmental ‘good’ for the planet, a perspective reinforced during the COP28 summit that brought together 85,000 participants, culminating in 152 global climate action events. Clean energy took center stage, highlighting both its momentum and pivotal role in climate change response. In Africa, a continent widely recognized for its limited contribution to the climate change crisis, clean energy has been identified as an imperative for the continent to meet its energy needs while reducing carbon emissions. However, underlying this push are concerns about whether transitioning to clean energy could become yet another phase in the continent’s long history of regressive environmental exploitation predominantly by former colonial powers, which has contributed to environmental injustice.
At the micro level, environmental injustice can manifest as displacement of communities, destruction of flora and fauna, disruption of livelihoods, exposure to hazardous waste, and little direct benefit to marginalized communities that are often the most affected. At a meso level, clean energy transition may exacerbate inequalities by prioritizing urban and industrial energy needs over rural energy access, could foster labor exploitation in mining sectors, and enable corporate and elite capture of resources. On a macro level, Africa is at risk of experiencing a repeat of neocolonial patterns of resource extraction, with the accumulation of unsustainable debt for large-scale projects, and potential geopolitical tensions over critical minerals, all while bearing the disproportionate environmental and social burdens of a transition the continent contributes little to causing.
Indeed, large-scale, clean energy infrastructure projects have surged across the continent, especially in rural and semi-arid regions. These locations tend to be inhabited by pastoralists, smallholder farmers, or indigenous communities. However, it has been reported that when governments or large corporations acquire land for these large renewable energy projects, it is followed by displacement, loss of livelihoods, and land-related conflict. For example, in Kenya, the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project sparked legal conflict between the historically marginalized pastoralist communities, the government, and investors over resettlement of the local population with inadequate consultation or compensation.
Critical minerals are indispensable to the clean energy transition, as they form the backbone of renewable energy technologies and energy storage systems. These minerals—such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and rare earth elements—are essential components of solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicle (EV) batteries, necessary for the global shift away from fossil fuels. However, the mining of critical minerals poses environmental justice related challenges. Historical precedent shows that wealth generated from the exploitation of critical mineral extraction in Africa has rarely resulted in prosperity for the majority of the local population. During the colonial period, European powers extracted African natural resources—such as gold, copper, and rubber—primarily to fuel their own industrializing economies, with little regard for local impact or investment in local development. Today, the extraction of lithium in Zimbabwe, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and graphite in Mozambique follow a similar pattern. These minerals are essential for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy storage, goods which the majority of local communities from underdeveloped parts of the world have limited access to, thus, they mostly experience resource extraction. The DRC holds approximately 70 percent of global cobalt reserves, and substantial lithium deposits have been discovered in Zimbabwe. However, the outcomes of extracting these resources should invoke reflection about the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the “clean energy revolution.” For instance, in Kolwezi, a town nicknamed the world’s ‘cobalt capital,’ the DRC government issued mining licenses to foreign corporations such the Chinese owned Congo Dongfang International Mining (CDM) and Compagnie Minière de Musonoi (COMMUS). However, to pave way for these operations, the government also forcefully evicted local inhabitants, resulting in state-sanctioned violence and human rights violations. The consequences of this exploitative system extend beyond local displacement. In December 2024, the DRC sued Apple, accusing the firm’s supply chain of being contaminated by “blood minerals,” which fund violence in the eastern parts of the country.
The demand for renewable energy minerals has sparked significant investment by foreign corporations competing for dominance over the global clean energy market. For instance, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, a Chinese company, invested USD 300 million in a lithium processing plant in Zimbabwe. Although foreign investment is an important driver of economic development, problems emerge when profits are almost entirely exported while domestic workers are paid low wages and provided with limited legal protections. In the worst cases, gross human rights violations such as child labor, toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, and gender inequality are also reported.
The green energy revolution risks perpetuating a cycle in which Africa remains at the periphery of the global economy, providing a substantial part of the raw materials necessary for renewable energy while the economic benefits of this resource abundance accrue elsewhere or within small clusters of Africa’s elites. The projected annual lithium concentrate production by Huayou and Tsingshan from the USD 300 million plant in Zimbabwe is approximately 450,000 metric tons, worth an estimated market value of USD 380 million. Should the company meet its production projections, it is likely to recuperate its investment in just one year, rendering the subsequent years of production purely for profit. More than 600 million people are estimated to lack access to electricity in Africa, yet the surge in renewable energy projects have mostly been designed to meet the energy demands of industrial and urban centers rather than the rural areas where the majority of those 600 million off-grid people live.
Clean energy projects, particularly hydropower, also create competition over both real and perceived resource scarcity. In regions threatened by water shortages, large hydropower projects can significantly harm downstream communities. The construction of the largest hydroelectric power project in Africa: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) for instance, has triggered a transnational ‘water conflict’ characterized by tense diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and Egypt. For Ethiopia, GERD is a sustainable way of addressing its chronic energy shortages, promoting industrialization, and lifting millions out of poverty. So vital is the GERD, that it is considered a symbol of Ethiopian nationalism and renaissance. On the other hand, Egypt is concerned with equitable water access and protecting its populations from the impacts of reduced water availability. Collectively, GERD has become a complex environmental justice question, creating a dilemma around equitable use versus equitable outcomes.
Restricting or undermining the use of the Nile by both countries could be interpreted as the perpetuation of historical environmental injustice in water use agreements of colonial-era treaties such as the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1902, which committed Ethiopia “not to construct or allow to be constructed, any work across the Blue Nile, Lake Tana, or the Sobat… except in agreement with His Britannic Majesty’s Government of the Sudan.” Other similar treaties include the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which accorded Egypt veto power over any construction projects along the Nile and its tributaries, or the 1959 Nile Treaty, which awarded Egypt 66 percent of the Nile waters, Sudan 22 percent, and the remainder left for evaporation. These forms of exclusion, if unresolved, could directly feed into the grievance cycle, a state in which individuals and groups perceive or experience harm and injustice from the omission or commission of instruments of governance. This could in turn lead to more open and violent conflicts.
It is critical that the renewable energy transition not come at the cost of environmental justice, unresolved displacement of communities, or disregard for human rights. The renewable energy revolution should not replicate the extractive models of the past, but instead offer a path toward self-sufficiency, equitable development, and participatory governance. It must support the generation of economic benefits for local populations by reinvesting profits into social institutions, infrastructure, and economy. As we make this transition, it is only by adopting a human security approach focused on justice and equity that we can ensure that indeed, what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.
Billy Agwanda is a PhD Presidential Scholar at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. He has been published in peer reviewed journals such as Politics and Governance, Population and Development Review, the African Journal on Terrorism, African Security, the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, and the African Journal on Conflict Resolution.
Billy has also contributed book chapters in the Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution, the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, the Routledge Handbook on Human Security and Sustainable Development in East Africa, and the Routledge Handbook of Conflict Response and Leadership in Africa. His research interests include identity conflicts, political violence, critical terrorism studies, peacebuilding and conflict resolution approaches.
