A scale-up of clean energy technology deployment including renewable energy and vehicle electrification in the Global South offers opportunities to meet rapidly growing energy demand, bridge the access deficit, and drive industrialization. Energy transition and green growth strategies must be closely tied to governments’ local value creation and job creation objectives. Unlocking these opportunities requires going beyond a focus on technology deployment alone, to an integrated approach that supports the development of local value chains with backward linkages to domestically available critical mineral resources.
A basket of policies is usually necessary, as part of a holistic industrial policy framework, that hinges on a long-term strategic vision and addresses both supply- and demand-side incentives, alongside interventions focused on education and training, regional and international trade frameworks, technology transfer, logistics and complementary infrastructure roll-out.
As countries across the Global South raise their climate ambitions while simultaneously advancing local value addition through various industrial policy tools, targeted efforts are needed to deliver the data and analytics, tools and support that can inform decision making and facilitate collaboration to enable Global South countries to have a stronger voice in the discourse on critical minerals and renewable energy supply chain development. There is need for a focused dialogue that identifies strategies in the international regime, including those related to trade, investments and technology, to enhance the participation of global south countries in clean energy value chains.
The roundtable will take place alongside the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) 2024 convened by the Council on Critical Minerals Development in the Global South facilitated by Sustainable Energy for All, the Institute for Transportation Studies (UC Davis) and Swaniti Global, in partnership with the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
It will bring together leaders from governments, industry, financing institutions and multilateral development agencies to identify the essential levers of change needed to support the development of local and regional renewable energy manufacturing capabilities, particularly in Africa. It will provide a platform for countries to share current gaps in data, tools, capacities and policy frameworks that are inhibiting them from fostering domestic value addition and ensuring equitable distribution of benefits. This discussion is timely as it anticipates the release of outcomes from the UNSG Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals in September 2024 and will contribute to deliberations on the implementation phase.
Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary- General for Sustainable Energy for All
H.E. Moses Engadu, Secretary General, Africa Minerals Strategy Group
Catalyzing South-South Cooperation for Local Value Chain Development: Introducing the Council for Critical Minerals Development in the Global South
Aditya Ramji (Director, Global South Clean Transportation Centre, UC Davis) & Divyam Nagpal (Principal Specialist – Renewable Energy, SEforALL)
Moderator: Zainab Usman, Director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Roundtable participants:
