Leveraging renewable energy resources for a just energy transition in Southern Africa: exploring the opportunities and challenges: draft report

Abstract

This study explores the opportunities and challenges of developing renewable energy for a just energy transition in Southern Africa. The study is motivated the realization that the Southern African Region is increasingly at risk of climate change-related disasters such as recurring and intensifying droughts, calamitous cyclones, and destructive floods – destroying crops and arable land, damaging infrastructure, loss of lives and the injuring of people, and the disruption of markets and trade. Notably, these disasters are compounding the region’s existing economic and social vulnerabilities such as long term low economic growth, high unemployment, high population growth, food insecurity, extreme poverty and inequality, endemic corruption, infrastructure challenges, and colonial political legacies. Southern Africa can leverage renewable energy for a just energy transition, the study focused on the energy policies, the socio-political economy of energy transition, examining case studies of 6 countries in Southern Africa (Botswana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia), policies for affordable renewable energy, technologies for accessing clean energy, and private sector investment in renewable energy.