Climate change is not only an environmental issue; rather, economic and social issues are at the core of the energy transition the world and Africa are grappling with now and, if these issues are not dealt with, the transition to low-carbon energy will fail.

The new book by development research organisation the African Climate Foundation (ACF) executive director Saliem Fakir 'Navigating Africa’s Climate Development Nexus' emphasises that bringing development and climate into the conversation is fundamentally important, Presidential Climate Commission deputy chairperson Dr Crispian Olver has said.

During the book’s launch, in Johannesburg, on August 15, he added that the book brings a deep and wide range of ideas and discourses to the debate about development and climate change.

“We see in the book that Saliem has training in philosophy and economics. The strength of the book is that it shows the thinking of someone who also has experience in trying to shift these issues confronting development from an academic debate to practice. He reflects a lot in the book of how technology is impacting on the processes of African development,” said research centre Southern Centre for Inequality Studies director Professor Imraan Valodia.

Reflecting on the work of Nobel prize winning economist W Arthur Lewis and its impact on development economics, Valodia said that, while brilliant, Lewis did not consider the planetary boundary in his discourse.

“The challenge for Africa is that, if we take the route to development that the West did and China most recently, then we will cross this planetary boundary. A lot of reflections in the book look at what the implications of this are.

“However, Saliem offers hope that, by managing this boundary with the correct set of economic policies, this might be an opportunity for Africa,” he said.

The book shows that the structural changes to move from fossil-fuel-based economies to cleaner and greener ones are grounded in messy political and practical considerations. It emphasises that the climate agenda cannot be separated from the development agenda, said Just Energy Transition (JET) unit in the Presidency financing manager Neil Cole.

“This means South Africa and Africa must avoid viewing the energy transition in a vacuum, and that each gigawatt of coal power that is replaced is linked to jobs and industries created and livelihoods protected.

“If we lose sight of this balance, the transition will lose legitimacy and political traction,” he said.

“The approach climate activists want Africa to take to tackle climate change does not work well owing to the underlying political economy. Development issues are more fundamental than climate issues and the question is how we can align climate investment in new technologies, focused in key sectors,” Fakir told those attending the launch.

The reason he started working in the ACF was to develop a better understanding of the issues confronting the continent, he said.

“Our work has increasingly shown that, without economic resilience, economies cannot deal with external shocks, whether these are financial, trade-linked, climatic or pandemic.”

The reason African economies do not have economic resilience is not solely owing to the capture of portions of the State by elites, aided and abetted by partners often in the developed world, but is also a combination of post-colonial structures continuing, the financialisation of the resource sectors and the lack of capital accumulation in Africa's economies.

“If African countries want to pursue something, such as building renewable energy infrastructure, then they must borrow money from elsewhere and import the equipment while having weak national fiscus. The question of economic resilience being key to climate resilience is something that I wanted to raise in the development conversation.

“If we take climate action, what are we trying to change? The tactics Africa takes may not work, and then what should it do?” he asked.

“How will reality bounce back our plans and how can we make adjustments on the journey and further respond to the barriers facing development? These are some of the underlying questions that we are trying to solve for climate and development,” Fakir said.