ETA Explains breaks down complex energy, climate, and extractive industries issues into clear, accessible insights. From just transition concepts and carbon markets to critical minerals and energy finance, this section demystifies technical debates shaping Africa’s energy future. Built for clarity and context, ETA Explains helps policymakers, journalists, advocates, and citizens understand the issues — without losing nuance or depth.
66 articles found
I grew up learning how to adapt to electricity failure. You learn early what time power usually goes out, you know when to charge phones, when to pump water, and when to run appliances. You learn the...
For most of the past decade, climate finance has been discussed as a moral equation. If African countries showed ambition, net-zero targets, transition plans, long lists of renewable projects, and...
Africa is central to the global energy transition, yet marginal within it. The minerals that make modern clean energy possible are increasingly sourced from Africa. Cobalt stabilises batteries,...
I have lost count of how many times I have heard the same sentence, delivered with confidence and concern in equal measure: Africa needs gas as a transition fuel. It is said in conference halls,...
For years, global climate negotiations have relied on a fragile yet powerful idea: that collective action, however imperfect, is preferable to unilateral drift. The machinery of climate governance...
Mini-grids are one of the rare areas in Africa’s energy transition where consensus exists. They work. They deliver reliable power faster than grid extension, cleaner power than diesel, and more...
“Only 14% of committed mini-grid funding has actually been disbursed.” That figure should stop every energy conversation in its tracks. I have spent years travelling through African communities where...
The most radical thing I have learned about Africa’s energy future did not come from a policy report, a donor strategy, or a conference panel. It came from watching young Africans refuse to wait. In...
I grew up counting nights by how dark they felt. In our part of Nigeria, as in most parts of Africa, darkness was not just the absence of light; it was a condition that shaped behaviour. When the sun...
Across Africa, electricity grids are failing more frequently and for more reasons than ever before. Floods wash away transmission lines, heatwaves overload transformers, conflict knocks out...
I still remember the first time I saw electricity reach a village.It was late in the 1990s, and I was a boy visiting my grandmother’s house in Cross River State, Nigeria. A single light bulb...
When I think about the childhoods many African children are living today, I am transported back to my own: a small house, a kerosene lantern that flickered more than it shone, and the low, constant...