Oil, Gas, Renewables and Critical Minerals: Africa’s Energy Transition Dilemma

Monica Mbugua

ESG & Corporate Accountability Lead | SARW

Monica opened the session by establishing the weight of what was at stake — not as an abstract policy exercise, but as a conversation rooted in lived continental realities. She framed Africa’s energy dilemma around four interlocking points:

• Where Africa stood after COP30 — the gains made, and the critical omissions;
• Africa’s development reality — energy poverty, infrastructure deficits, and sovereign resource wealth;
• The core dilemma — hydrocarbon revenues as a development tool versus binding climate commitments;
• What the session was designed to do — surface tensions, generate insight, and produce a clear message toward COP31.

Monica deliberately situated the audience as intellectual contributors, noting that the room held energy practitioners, legal scholars, civil society organisations, university researchers, and people working directly with communities. She reminded participants that the people in this webinar understood “what load shedding actually costs a business on our continent, what an offshore licence means for fishing communities, and what critical mineral contracts look like on the ground from the inside.”

Throughout the webinar, Monica functioned not only as  timekeeper but as a live synthesiser — drawing threads across panellists,  naming tensions as they emerged, and building a cumulative argument that the  conversation itself was shaping. Her closing summation at each transition point  elevated the panel discussion into a structured, forward-moving analysis.

Romão Xavier| Governance & Environmental Leadership Expert

Opening Tension:

Romão opened with what he called the “short-term dilemma” of oil and gas as transition fuels. While the global trend points toward fossil fuel phase-out, African leaders at COP30 argued compellingly that they need space to use their gas resources to power their industries and close the energy access gap. This produces a genuine and unresolved conflict between phasing out and the just, differentiated transition African countries are seeking.

Core Intervention: COP30 and Africa’s Positioning

Romão assessed both the achievements and the shortcomings of the Belém package:

• Confirmed climate finance mobilisation of 1.3 trillion USD annually by 2035 — a step forward, though mechanisms to translate commitments into accessible flows for African countries remain insufficient;
• Acknowledgement of Africa’s special needs as a continent requiring differentiated support to achieve the 1.5°C target;
• Agreement on just transition mechanisms — though without clear targets or concrete pathways for a differentiated African approach;
• Operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund from 2026, with a coal funding tranche already launched — a genuine gain;
• Progress on Article 6 carbon market rules, though African countries lack control over the majority of these mechanisms, leaving significant risk of greenwashing and responsibility avoidance by wealthier nations;
• Adaptation and fossil fuel phase-out were largely sidelined — the critical unresolved tension heading into COP31.

Romão described Africa as entering a “paradoxical challenge”: the continent faces a pressing need for clean energy while development imperatives continue to depend on fossil fuels, particularly gas. He highlighted that Africa holds over 60% of global solar potential yet receives only 30% of global energy finance — a structural inequity that must be addressed at COP31.

COP31 Priority:

A united African voice across climate finance,  critical minerals governance and energy pathways. African countries must enter  Bonn and COP31 negotiating through their own frameworks and on their own terms.

Angela Khanali Mutsotso | Energy & Natural Resources Lawyer, Global Gas and Oil Network

Opening Tension:

Angela identified the absence of a ‘golden thread’ linking national economic plans with climate commitments and energy strategies. Many African countries have NDCs, national climate laws and energy plans in place — but these exist in silos, without a coherent connective logic that makes implementation realistic.

Core Intervention: Balancing Energy Access, Climate Commitments and Justice

Angela provided a structured analysis of how African countries can navigate the balance between immediate energy needs and long-term climate obligations:

• All sectoral planning — not just energy — must incorporate climate commitments. Some countries have begun requiring climate risk assessments and mitigation/adaptation alignment across all key sectors; this should become standard;
• Planning must begin from actual development and energy demand, rather than importing transition models designed for different resource endowments and economic conditions;
• Regional power pools offer an underutilised mechanism for scaling clean energy access while managing supply and demand variation across borders;
• Renewable potential — from Kenya’s geothermal resources to solar and wind across the continent — must be mapped and mobilised as industrial inputs, not simply development aspiration;
• Phase-out plans for fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas, remain largely absent from national planning. Coal has timelines; oil and gas do not. Angela identified this as an urgent priority for civil society and research institutions to advance;
• Critical materials governance must ensure that any expansion in mining is accompanied by community protection, environmental safeguards, and revenue frameworks that serve present and future generations.

Angela also made a strong case for prioritising both grid and off-grid clean energy access for domestic users and communities in pipeline areas — not only for industrial consumers.

COP31 Priority:

Pre-align regionally before COP31. Agree across  regions on commitments and requests, including climate finance terms,  technology transfer demands and just transition principles. Arrive at COP31  with a single, coordinated African position grounded in the betterment of  livelihoods across the continent.

Melissa Groenink-Groves | Programme Manager, Natural Justice

Opening Tension:

Melissa named the central tension she brings to every engagement: the need to centre communities and human rights — not as a supplementary consideration, but as the organising principle of transition planning. She identified carbon offsets and the framing of gas as a “transition fuel” as false solutions that must be resisted.

Core Intervention: The Real Impacts of Offshore Extraction on Marine Life and Coastal Communities

Melissa grounded the policy conversation in the material reality of offshore oil and gas development through the full value chain:

• Seismic blasting at the reconnaissance stage produces massive acoustic impacts on marine species at both individual and population levels. Population-level decline leads to ecosystem degradation, which cascades directly into fisheries and the livelihoods of coastal communities;
• Exploration drilling carries severe oil spill risk. Oil spills are not manageable events — they produce generational impacts on coastlines, marine ecosystems, and communities whose livelihoods depend on the ocean. Remediation after the scale of Deepwater Horizon remains incomplete years later;
• Africa is now entering ultra-deep water drilling in conditions that are geologically and climatologically unprecedented. Technical risk is extreme: TotalEnergies withdrew from a project off South Africa’s east coast due to the difficulty of ultra-deep drilling in the unpredictable conditions created by the Agulhas Current;
• Production phases bring multiplying well infrastructure, pipelines and onshore facilities — each with its own environmental and community impact, each adding to the cumulative risk of catastrophic spill;
• The promises of jobs and prosperity attached to oil and gas development consistently diverge from the lived reality of communities near extraction sites. There is no successful global example of oil and gas development producing thriving communities.

On the South African context specifically, Melissa argued that the oil and gas sector is at such an early stage — with refineries closing and existing infrastructure non-functional — that any new investment will produce stranded assets, cannot be justified economically or climatically, and must be actively challenged now while there is still an opportunity to prevent the sector from becoming entrenched.

COP31 Priority:

Africa must become a renewable energy superpower — but  only if the transition is genuinely different from the extractive model it is  replacing. Human rights, worker protections and community benefits must be  institutionalised. Free, prior and informed consent must be non-negotiable.

Leezola Zongwe  |  Critical Minerals Researcher, Enzi Ijayo Africa Initiative

Opening Tension:

Leezola named a frustration she carries into every engagement: African governments are negotiating critical mineral agreements as if they do not have the leverage they actually hold. She pointed to the slow operationalisation of the AU Critical Minerals Coalition as a symptom of a deeper failure to institutionalise collective sovereignty.

Core Intervention: Six Solutions for Africa’s Critical Minerals Opportunity

Leezola reframed the discussion from scarcity thinking to leverage thinking, beginning with the facts: Africa holds 30% of global critical mineral reserves, 60% of the best solar resources and an estimated 460 gigawatts of wind potential. Demand for critical minerals is projected to increase nearly 500% by 2050. The combination of mineral reserves and clean energy potential to process them affordably is an integrated industrial advantage no other continent can replicate.

She then presented six concrete solutions:

1. Beneficiation as industrial policy with teeth: No raw ore should leave the continent. Every extractive agreement must include beneficiation clauses. Local processing can create 2.3 million jobs and increase Africa’s GDP by 12%. Processing bauxite into aluminium using renewables could generate 37 billion USD in additional revenue, 280,000 jobs, and save 335 million tonnes of CO2 annually;
2. Renewable energy as industrial feedstock: African countries must treat their renewable energy not as a development aspiration but as a competitive industrial input. Namibia’s projected green hydrogen production costs of around 1 USD per kg by 2030 are a demonstration of what is already becoming viable;
3. Regional integration as non-negotiable: The African Continental Free Trade Agreement exists. It must be implemented. African markets should be understood as a single bloc — infrastructure like the Lobito and Tazara corridors exists to make this real;
4. Special Economic Zones designed around mineral-specific supply chains: Africa has over 230 SEZs whose records have been mixed. The critical design shift is anchoring them in specific processing supply chains. South Africa’s Musina-Makhado SEZ and the DRC-Zambia EV battery zones demonstrate what is possible when design is deliberate;
5. Governance that is transparent, accountable and community-centred: Free, prior and informed consent must be standard. Sovereign wealth funds and community benefit funds must be designed as wealth redistribution mechanisms;
6. Negotiate on Africa’s terms: Leezola gave the live example of the EU tendering a closed bidding process for EU-based consultants to draft Namibia’s critical minerals strategy — a country that does not even have a statutory definition of ‘critical minerals’ in its Minerals Act. African governments must build their own regulatory frameworks before signing agreements based on external standards.

COP31 Priority:

Political will sustained across electoral cycles.  Regional regulatory consistency. Solidarity that prevents countries from being  played against each other. An unwavering commitment that communities bearing  the costs of extraction must share the rewards.

The webinar produced a set of clear, convergent conclusions that reflect both the intellectual richness of the discussion and the urgency of the moment:

• The energy transition cannot be designed through imported models. Africa’s development realities, resource endowments, and existing infrastructure require transition pathways designed on the continent, not retrofitted from elsewhere.
• Africa holds extraordinary leverage. The continent has 30% of critical mineral reserves, 60% of the world’s best solar potential, and growing continental solidarity through the AU, AfCFTA and infrastructure corridors. The work now is to pull the lever.
• Communities must be at the centre. The consistent thread across all four panellists and multiple audience interventions was that neither extraction nor transition can continue to be designed around national or global level abstractions while communities bear the costs without sharing the benefits.
• Governance is the deciding variable. The question of whether critical minerals, renewables or fossil fuel transition produce development or deepened inequality is not fundamentally a question of resources. It is a question of institutional design, enforcement capacity, inter-ministerial coordination, and political will sustained across electoral cycles.
• The tensions remain real and unresolved. How Africa secures climate financing without reproducing dependency. How industrialisation proceeds without deepening inequality. How transition pathways become genuinely just — economically, environmentally and socially across the entire value chain. These are not questions COP31 will resolve. But they are the questions Africa must arrive carrying with clarity, coordination, and force.

The message this webinar sends forward to Bonn and to COP31 is consistent: Africa is entering this moment with resources, with leverage, with increasingly precise demands around justice, equity and sovereignty. The question is whether those demands will be translated into coordinated political action.

That translation is the work ahead.