The world, including Africa, is facing a major international political event of “seismic proportions”, South African Electricity and Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa highlighted in his keynote address to the Africa Energy Indaba 2025 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, on Tuesday. Although he carefully named no names, he was undoubtedly referring to the dramatic upheavals in international politics being caused by the new administration in the US. He pointed out that these would affect African countries' interaction around energy and energy security.

The impact would be significant, he warned. Multilateral cooperation was under deep strain. Multilateral investment flows remained unequal. Trade had been weaponised, making it more difficult for developing countries to achieve sustainable development. The Paris climate accords were not being achieved.

Political leadership was required, he affirmed. Africa needed a coordinated response to these challenges.

“We’re going through turbulent waters,” he pointed out. “It is in our collective interest as a continent if we can develop a coordinated response to these headwinds.”

On the other hand, there was another major international political event this year – the G20 meeting, to be hosted by South Africa. This could be a defining moment for Africa, he stated. South Africa was framing it as “Africa’s G20”. The fact that South Africa had succeeded Brazil as president of the G20 had allowed the two countries to cooperate to drive the interests of the developing world, he observed.

The theme of this G20 was “solidarity, equality and sustainability”. Under this overarching theme, the G20 had three major work themes for this year: achieving economic growth and reducing inequality; food security; and AI.

The G20 also included an energy technical working group which would include coverage of the transition to clean energy. Ramokgopa affirmed that this group would have to recognise that every country must be able to select its own path to achieve this transition.

In Africa, he highlighted, 43% of the population, or 600-million people, still lacked access to electricity. One-billion Africans still used biomass for cooking fuel. Per capita energy consumption in Africa was a sixteenth of the global average. And African industrialisation was hampered by frequent power cuts, which every year cost the continent’s economies 24% of their gross domestic products.

“We have to transition from long-winded discussions to action,” he stated. “We also know that increasing energy investment is at the heart of enabling African prosperity. We need to address the issues of the funding and financing of [energy] infrastructure.”