African countries at COP30 say a lack of climate finance to speed the transition to renewable energy means they should be given more leeway to use their fossil fuel resources to benefit their people.
As support grows at the climate talks in Belém for a global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels, championed by Brazil’s president and environment minister, leaders and officials from Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique have said African nations should be allowed to keep using their fossil fuel resources to develop their economies.
Africa receives less than 2% of international clean energy investment, and badly needs funding to help increase access to power supplies, which some 600 million people still lack, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Carlos Lopes, COP30’s special envoy for Africa, told Climate Home News that while the priority is still for Africa to transition as quickly as possible to renewables, “if the funding is not coming, Africans have to be pragmatic and will have to use any possibilities to enhance their development”.
“Africans are basically trapped not because of infrastructure but because of the financing schemes that are not allowing them to move as fast as they should wish for the new form of economy,” Lopes said, adding that too much global finance was going into fossil fuels rather than renewables.
The IEA’s “Financing Electricity Access in Africa” 2025 report found that less than $2.5 billion was committed for new electricity access connections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2023. Meanwhile, financing has been concentrated in a small number of countries including Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, and has been skewed towards urban areas.
African leaders call for “room” for fossil fuels
Several African countries have lowered ambition for cutting emissions in their latest national climate plans (known as NDCs), citing a lack of funding that has hampered climate action, a message that was echoed during the leaders’ summit in Belém last week.
Ghanaian minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said “conversations [on phasing out] must be approached with strategic care and profound understanding”.
“To deny Africa the strategic use of these [natural] resources is to deny our right to develop, to light our homes and to power industries,” Buah, Ghana’s lands minister and acting environment minister, told the leaders’ summit.
Mozambique President Daniel Chapo, meanwhile, supported the idea of a just transition, but one that gives Africa the “economic and political room” to use its natural resources to benefit its people.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, had already made clear in its NDC that it planned to boost the use of natural gas as a so-called transition fuel.
Vice President Kashim Shettima told the leaders’ meeting that Nigeria would use natural gas “to stabilise power and drive industrial growth” while promoting clean energy by expanding solar and off-grid solutions for rural electrification.
A just transition made for Africa
The world agreed for the first time to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels” two years ago at COP28 in Dubai, but a plan to implement that pledge at the global level has yet to be sketched out.
If countries decide to work on one, it is likely that poor countries will ask for rich nations to set earlier deadlines to reduce their production and use of coal, oil and gas.
Nafi Quarshie, Africa director for the non-profit Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), said any fossil fuel phase-out targets in a roadmap must be “concrete and time-bound”, and reflect different realities.
“Africa cannot be talking about phase-out when it has not phased in,” she told a press conference on Wednesday. “Africa’s pathway cannot mirror Europe’s or America’s. The transition in Africa must prioritise energy access, job creation, diversification and development, not just emissions reduction targets.”
Until the COP process delivers on its financial promises to Africa, the continent cannot be asked to abandon the fossil fuels that currently provide a huge chunk of government revenues in some economies “without credible, accessible, or predictable financial support to replace them,” Quarshie added.
