Summary

.

Introduction

Endowed with abundant sunshine, wind and hydropower resources, Africa has significant potential to become the next global hub for solar, wind and green hydrogen investments, offering a path to both energy and economic diversification. In 2015, the 24th Ordinary Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union adopted Agenda 2063, a transformational plan aimed at tapping this potential and advancing economic, social and environmental development in Africa by 2063. One of the key priority areas of the agenda is to ‘ensure modern, efficient, reliable, cost-effective, renewable and environmentally friendly energy to all African households, businesses, industries and institutions’. Agenda 2063 builds on Goal 7 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 7), which aims to advance clean, stable and affordable energy for all by 2030.

To achieve the objective of delivering reliable, modern energy to the approximately 600 million Africans who still lack access to electricity, several African countries have identified investment in renewable energy infrastructure and technologies as core priorities. Some have already released national visions and strategies to promote investment in renewable energy and clean technologies as pathways to open up other economic sectors. For example, a central aspect of Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan is to create jobs to ‘lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty and driv[e] economic growth’. Similarly, economic diversification is a key priority area in South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET IP) for 2023-2027, which aims to create ‘quality jobs in new sectors like electric vehicles, green hydrogen, renewable energy and manufacturing’. Similar framing of the green transition as an economic opportunity, and not just a climate imperative, is found in policy visions in Morocco, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, some of which have already made progress in promoting homegrown solutions that deliver clean and reliable energy to underserved communities, while unlocking green economic opportunities.

Yet, as shown in the United Nations’ technology needs assessment (TNA) reports, many African countries still lack the homegrown renewable energy technologies needed to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition. Green technologies, such as solar panels, require response and grid control software and smart distributed energy resource management systems (DERMs) that are simply not available on the continent. This forces countries to import technologies they could otherwise manufacture domestically. Nigeria, for example, imported over four million solar panels in 2023 alone, at a cost of more than USD 200 million annually, making solar energy less affordable to businesses and households, especially in poor and underserved communities.

As part of efforts to address these technology gaps, African countries are increasingly entering into new partnerships aimed at attracting green technologies and investments needed to develop and maximise the continent’s renewable energy resources. In addition to a solar partnership agreement with the Netherlands, Nigeria has recently announced a new EUR 7.6 billion green energy agreement with China to develop green hydrogen, a clean energy source produced from renewable electricity. In 2024, Tunisia signed a memorandum of understanding with European conglomerates – TotalEnergies, EREN Groupe and VERBUND – to develop green hydrogen for export to Central Europe. Tunisia has also entered into green hydrogen arrangements with Saudi Arabia and several European countries. Other African countries such as Namibia, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco have announced green technology partnerships focused on leveraging their renewable energy potential to unlock a green and sustainable energy future, while also creating jobs and economic benefits domestically.

Meanwhile, China has invested more than USD 13 billion in clean energy projects across Africa since 2000. Furthermore, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union have announced Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) aimed at mobilising financing and technology assistance for African countries to transition to clean energy. These JETPs have included a USD 8.5 billion pledge for South Africa, USD 2.5 billion for Senegal and proposals to support renewable energy technology development in other African countries such as Senegal, Egypt, the Ivory Coast, Kenya and Morocco.

However, despite the prospects of these emerging green technology partnerships, significant concerns arise regarding their design and implementation. While these partnerships may offer African nations short-term financing and technology access, in the long term, they risk entrenching green colonialism, i.e., the production of clean energy in a manner that exploits Africa’s natural resources, prioritises the needs of other world regions and undermines social, environmental and human rights standards, especially in Indigenous communities.

This paper, therefore, addresses two questions: What are the risks of green colonialism in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships, and what policy safeguards should African countries adopt to address them? To do so, the paper relies primarily on publicly accessible partnership agreements and reports by surveyed African countries (Egypt, Namibia, Nigeria, Tunisia, South Africa, Morocco, Kenya, the Gambia, Tanzania and Zambia) to assess the drivers and implications of green colonialism risks in emerging partnership agreements. Furthermore, the paper adopts an analytical review of the published literature to unpack and analyse emerging policy responses to the risks of green colonialism in these countries. Owing to its scope and the nature of the methodological approach, the paper cannot be regarded as representative. That said, since the survey is combined with the literature review, it provides an analytical profile of and insights into the drivers of green colonialism risks in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships.

The paper proceeds in three sections, Section I being this introduction. Section II unpacks the four key manifestations of green colonialism trends and risks in the design and implementation of green technology partnerships. Section III discusses the need for a holistic reform process that places transparency, accountability, and public participation at the heart of green partnership agreements, from design and approval through to implementation, to achieve just, sustainable, and inclusive outcomes.

.

More technology partnerships, less sustainable development? Drivers of green colonialism risks

Although Africa is not a homogeneous geographical unit, the growing demand across the continent for foreign technologies and finance to expand access to clean and reliable energy provokes questions about the potential risks of emerging green technology partnerships. Four key concerns emerge: i) high external debt obligations; ii) export-driven energy production; iii) adverse impacts on water, energy and land resources; and iv) restrictive fiscal and contractual terms.

The first key question is the extent to which green technology partnerships involve new external debt obligations. Without adequate safeguards, emerging green technology agreements risk exacerbating debt levels. Estimates indicate that African governments already spend close to USD 163 billion every year on debt service, with countries such as the Gambia, Egypt, the Ivory Coast and Kenya projected to be at risk of severe debt distress in 2026. Green partnership agreements that involve new loans could significantly increase this risk. Nevertheless, as they grapple with ageing energy infrastructure, rising energy poverty, and limited domestic funding alternatives, African countries are increasingly embracing green technology partnerships, even when these result in new debt obligations. For example, the recent announcement of a USD 5 million loan from the Government of Canada and the International Finance Corporation to finance solar hybrid mini-grids in northern Nigeria has prompted questions regarding its potential to exacerbate Nigeria’s rising debt profile.

At the same time, China’s growing influence in green partnership agreements across Africa is raising concerns about unsustainable debt traps. Such high debt burdens risk re-entrenching the colonial legacy of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, whereby colonial powers lent excessive amounts of money to African countries and obtained significant leverage over collateralised national infrastructure and political decision-making processes when those nations struggled to repay their debts. Green energy partnerships that cede financial, social or political sovereignty will not only undermine sustainable development but also make it difficult, if not impossible, for African countries to achieve energy security. SDG 17.4 specifically calls on developed countries to ‘assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring by 2030’. Achieving this target will require new forms of green technology diplomacy and partnerships that do not lead to unsustainable debt accumulation.

The second consideration is the extent to which green technology partnerships boost domestic energy access and technology manufacturing capacity. Green partnership agreements that primarily focus on exporting renewable energy produced in Africa to meet the energy needs of investing countries also risk entrenching green colonialism. Green hydrogen technology investments in Tunisia, Namibia, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco have attracted criticism on this front, despite their economic and financing prospects for delivering low value addition to local communities through enhanced domestic energy access, local content, empowerment and entrepreneurship.

The very premise of developing Africa’s renewable energy resources for export to meet energy needs in China, Europe, and other regions outside Africa introduces a complicated resources-for-money arrangement, whereby Africa’s natural resources are exchanged for financial, technological, security, and other forms of support. Meanwhile, the resources return to African countries as finished technologies or products that Africans themselves cannot afford. Such deals are not new in Africa. In fact, they mirror colonial-era power asymmetries, which saw Africa’s natural resources exported to other regions under often foreign-dictated concessions. For many years, the stranglehold over resource production, with little or no local value addition, by large international oil companies (IOCs) – known as the Seven Sisters, who came mainly from the USA, Canada, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and China – undermined African states’ resource sovereignty, i.e., their ability to make decisions on their own natural resources. The current rush for Africa’s renewable resources risks re-entrenching this legacy and could trigger a new resource curse, this time in renewable energy.¹

The third risk associated with trends in green technology partnerships concerns adverse impacts on water, energy, and land rights. This is particularly concerning when land grabbing leads to forced displacement, especially of Indigenous groups. A recent report documents the growing evidence that clean energy projects in Africa, especially hydropower projects, are linked to human rights violations, including land grabs, modern slavery and forced labour. Furthermore, a high incidence of workers’ protests over poor working conditions associated with Chinese investments in Kenya, the Gambia and Zambia are attracting scrutiny of the design of green energy partnerships which lack social and human rights safeguards to ensure rights-based implementation. These developments are in danger of re-entrenching the colonial legacy of state-aided dispossession of African peasants, pastoralists, nomads and Indigenous communities from ancestral lands for foreign capital.

The fourth risk arises when green technology agreements include restrictive clauses and provisions that may constrain a country’s ability to adopt and implement new environmental or human rights regulations. A recent UN report has highlighted how stabilisation provisions in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and clean energy agreements, which freeze states’ ability to update existing laws or contracts, may constrain countries’ ability to develop new legislation or regulations. Tanzania, for instance, is currently facing three arbitration proceedings by international companies as a result of new legislation passed in the country to regulate green investments in the mining sector. Eight similar disputes have been filed against the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Niger.

The courtroom battles and arbitration proceedings arising from green technology partnerships underscore the need for African countries to carefully ensure that current or new green technology investments do not delay or constrain their ability to regulate such projects in the future. Previous studies have documented how inadequate access to information about green technologies and insufficient legal capacity to negotiate fair and transparent investment agreements often result in a cycle of investment arrangements that exacerbate technology dependence, limit regulatory autonomy and lead to costly disputes and legal liability. Such lopsided agreements risk re-entrenching the colonial legacy of inequitable resource and technology partnerships, from which it may take African countries decades to detach.

The question, therefore, is how to ensure that Africa’s green technology partnerships deliver just and inclusive social, economic and environmental benefits that unlock a sustainable energy future for the continent.

.

Placing justice and equity at the heart of Africa’s green technology partnerships

Addressing the risks of green colonialism in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships will require a holistic reform process, one which closes the governance gaps that drive and deepen the vulnerabilities of many African countries to these risks in the first place. The danger is that effective implementation of green partnership agreements will be marred by perennial barriers to good governance, which would otherwise strengthen transparency, accountability and public participation (TAP) in resource development and management.

According to a 2021 resource governance index, virtually all African countries score very low on law and governance structures that promote TAP in the natural resource sector. Many resource-rich African countries have consequently fallen prey to a resource curse, whereby corruption and illicit financial flows not only rob them of the resources needed to implement infrastructure development and renewable energy programmes, but also contribute to the poverty and economic scarcity which drive rising debt levels. For example, despite Nigeria’s dominant position as Africa’s largest oil producer and exporter, many years of corruption and resource mismanagement have left the country with a high debt burden, wealth inequality, technological dependence and growing poverty. According to a 2025 World Bank report, approximately 139 million Nigerians (about 62% of the population) live in poverty.

To prevent such trends, the African Union Panel of the Wise encourages all African countries to ensure that ‘transparency and accountability mechanisms are in place prior to, and during, initiatives to develop and exploit natural resources’. According to the panel, ‘these mechanisms should include full reporting on the revenues collected from natural resource activities and on the allocation of these revenues to programmes, governments and communities’. Addressing the risks of green colonialism will therefore require investments and agreements that place public interest and national sovereignty at the heart of the emerging green technology agenda. At the core of these initiatives will be transparency, accountability and inclusivity, as outlined below.

Transparency requires enhancing the availability, accessibility, and accuracy of information on green partnership arrangements. As noted earlier, some of the concerns associated with emerging green partnership arrangements in the countries surveyed for this paper relate to a lack of publicly accessible information on the potential benefits, costs, health impacts and public benefits of such agreements, especially for local communities. This fuels public concerns and perceptions of colonial-era scenarios of unequal trade relationships. For example, while information on the Canada-European Union Green Alliance is publicly accessible, accessing information on the green finance loan from Canada to Nigeria does not yield any publicly accessible result on government portals. As the African Union Panel of the Wise states, promoting transparency in the context of green partnerships will require African countries to release publicly accessible reports on the nature, scope, elements and financial details of green partnership alliances in a manner that sustains public confidence and trust.

Enhanced accountability, which the AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption emphasises as a mechanism to promote good governance, includes establishing processes at the design, approval, and implementation phases to monitor the outcomes of green partnership agreements against their stated objectives. At the design phase, rather than prioritising tax and fiscal incentives to deliver low-cost energy for other regions of the world, the central focus of Africa’s green technology partnerships and investments should be on enhancing domestic energy security, thereby providing a reliable, affordable and accessible clean energy supply to Africa’s energy poor. During the approval phase, technology partnerships should include adequate safeguards to ensure debt sustainability. African countries should develop national strategies and policies that limit the approval of new debt and integrate debt restructuring into new green partnership agreements.

Regarding implementation, one innovative approach to enhancing access to financing for green technologies and projects without incurring additional debt is the use of debt-for-nature swaps. Several African countries, such as the DRC, are already following this path, seemingly inspired by initiatives across the globe. Costa Rica, for instance, has successfully leveraged debt-for-nature swaps to conserve rainforests since the 1980s. More recently, Belize has recorded progress in using debt-for-nature swaps to fund ecological restoration programmes, which have reduced the country’s external debt by 10% of gross domestic product (GDP). Leveraging such innovative financing solutions in Africa’s green technology partnerships could unlock similar financial, environmental and economic co-benefits for the continent. This will enrich the mix of increased green financing, debt forgiveness and other concessional lending initiatives that will help reduce the debt burden in Africa and free up financing for the green transition. This mix should be strategically integrated into African countries’ negotiations of green partnership agreements.

Advancing accountability also includes embedding robust human rights and sustainability measures into green technology agreements in strict adherence to international human rights standards and the United Nations’ guiding principles. This alignment involves conducting thorough human rights and environmental impact assessments across the negotiation, planning, funding and execution stages of green technology investment initiatives, and swiftly addressing any negative impacts or risks that may arise. By embedding human rights safeguards in the approval processes for green technology investment initiatives, African countries, together with local communities and other stakeholders, could better assess the implementation of green partnership agreements to prevent adverse impacts.

There is also a need to enhance public participation in implementing green partnership agreements through active energy citizenship. Excessive dependence on imported green technologies by African countries creates imbalances in power relationships that exacerbate the risks of green colonialism. Previous studies indicate that, due to unclear legal frameworks for green investments, a weak investment climate and a lack of supportive policies for clean technology entrepreneurship, domestic capacity for green technology remains weak across the continent. African countries are simply unable to attract the sustained flow of private sector investments and technologies needed to drive the transition to sustainable economies and societies. The result is a perpetual cycle of dependence on imported technologies.

African countries must therefore prioritise local content initiatives that address the barriers to homegrown clean technology entrepreneurship. A starting point is to undertake comprehensive assessments of the legal and institutional barriers that weaken private-sector participation in green technology development. Supportive commercial and investment laws that simplify the process of business formalisation, registration and participation in transition programmes should be established. In addition to these legal reforms, financial incentives should be provided to encourage entrepreneurs to unlock homegrown green solutions. These can be in the form of direct grants, concessional or low-interest loans, investment tax credits or reversed taxes, or de-risking instruments such as insurance, all of which should be geared towards supporting the upfront capital investment needed to develop clean technology initiatives.²

Finally, addressing the risks of green colonialism in Africa’s renewable energy partnerships will require enhancing the institutional capacity of the agencies and ministries involved in the design and implementation of green technology partnership arrangements. Negotiating win-win agreements will require African countries to invest in training and capacity-development programmes and resources for officers across a wide range of legal domains, including sustainable development, international trade and investment, treaty negotiation, diplomacy, and technology. International development organisations can support this process by making Africa-focused knowledge materials, such as the newly published Sustainable Development Law, more accessible to African policymakers, for example, by supporting their translation into local languages. Higher education institutions and professional societies also have key roles to play in developing tailored courses on green diplomacy, international law and sustainable development. These courses will offer hands-on executive knowledge and skills to African negotiators, deepening their expertise in green technology development and deployment.

.

Conclusion

The abundant natural resources of the African continent, coupled with its significant workforce and youth population, make it an attractive hub for new green energy investments and partnerships. However, several barriers risk re-entrenching green colonialism, unsustainable debt accumulation and technology dependence. These include unclear legal frameworks for green investments, weak human rights safeguards, limited capacity for negotiation, and inadequate policies to support local content development and clean technology entrepreneurship.

Africa’s green technology partnerships must ultimately be designed, implemented and led by Africa, with the support of international stakeholders interested in unlocking just, inclusive and sustainable green investment opportunities. Overcoming green colonialism will therefore require strong political will on the part of African countries to implement supportive domestic laws and policies that move the continent beyond being a passive recipient of green technologies and investments towards becoming a co-creator of homegrown green technologies. By establishing rights-based policy measures, African nations can refocus green technology partnerships on domestic value creation and sustainable development priorities. These partnerships can then help diversify their economies and boost reliable, affordable access to modern energy.

Endnotes

About the Author

Professor Damilola S. Olawuyi

Professor Damilola S Olawuyi SAN is an international lawyer, professor, and policy adviser specialising in business and human rights, energy, natural resources, and environmental law.