Dr Grace Wang compares China’s and the West’s approaches to energy development in Africa, emphasising their impacts on gender equality and opportunities for women in the renewable energy sector.
“The lack of energy access in Africa is a great injustice, but increased spending on impactful projects could quickly turn the tide,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. Universal access to affordable clean energy is a critical factor for sustainable and inclusive economic development, as extoled by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2063 African Union’s Agenda. Global efforts in advancing energy transition and ensuring renewable energy access in Africa can be simply divided into two categories: the China approach and the Western way. In another article on China’s engagement in Africa’s future, it is discovered that China has started talent training and exchange in the technology and energy field under the One Belt One Road Initiative and South-South Cooperation framework in addition to its infrastructure projects. The G7’s “Energy For Growth in Africa” initiative aims to attract private capital through public finance and technical aid to overcome investment barriers in the renewable energy sector in Africa.
Government-led energy investments describe the essence of the China approach, while the G7’s energy initiative focuses on attracting private capital investment and leveraging public- private partnership. One key difference between these two approaches lies in the emphasis on gender and development, which insinuates cultural and social values in power competitions in the energy battlefield.
But the question is, why do women matter in the renewable energy field and the green economy transition in Sub-Saharan Africa? Among the two development approaches, or simply put, the Chinese one vs the Western one, is there a superior and more suitable development approach for the African continent?
Possible Job Opportunities for Women Labour Force
The transition to the green economy offers job opportunities to reduce gender inequalities in the labour market through changing male/female job perceptions as well as evaluating the economic values of women’s unpaid work such as childcare on behalf of the environment. Thanks to Africa’s vast renewable energy resources including sun, wind, water, and geothermal energy, Sub-Saharan African countries can accelerate the deployment of renewable energy. The expected expansion of the clean energy sector will require a large skilled workforce, particularly in the private sector. Green economic transition to clean energy and the continued investment in climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa offers women participation opportunities in the energy sector. Compared with the traditional male-dominated energy sector, the clean energy industry shares a multidimensionality characteristic which presents many job opportunities for women. For instance, women who work in finance, law, economics and environmental science can join the clean energy sector as policy frameworks, regulations and commercialization are taking in shape. According to the Green Jobs for Women in Africa report, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the most promising clean energy sectors for women are bioenergy and solar energy. It is estimated that there will be more than 600,000 new jobs by 2050 in Sub-Saharan Africa’s solar energy sector which provides African women with many entry points in solar energy sector.
Women Leadership and Entrepreneurship
Despite promising green jobs prospects, stereotypes and social norms still impede women’s participation in core business in clean energy sector and challenge women’s authority as organizational leaders. Some female employees in the energy sector state that the lack of access to on-site fieldwork limits their career progression because on-site fieldwork enables them to have a thorough understanding of the renewable energy supply chain and relevant technical matters to advance to leadership positions in this sector.
On a good side, the clean energy sector has the potential to open many employment opportunities for women to join the sector as green entrepreneurs. In fact, Africa has the highest portion of female entrepreneurs in the world, with 25.9% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa in the process of starting or already managing a business. By contrast, the rate of female entrepreneurial activity in Europe only accounts for 5.7%, according to the European Investment Bank. Many female founders in Africa start their businesses as a means of survival which differs from their Western counterparts that seek to achieve female empowerment and social advancement. It is difficult for African women entrepreneurs to scale up their businesses and attract investments when they are struggling for survival. As shown by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which has developed capacity-building support program such as the African Women’s Development Fund, “across Kenya and Nigeria, women shared that the biggest barrier standing in the way of realizing their economic ambitions was lack of access to capital or other resources.”
Gender and Development – Fuel Feminine Energy to Energy Transition
Climate change is accelerating poverty gaps while people are competing for limited resources and societies become polarized. Women matter in the renewable energy field and the green economy transition in Sub-Saharan Africa because the region’s clean energy sector has the potential to offer women job opportunities to alleviate them out of poverty, and to advance economic and social development.
Despite women’s role in the clean energy sector, in our previously published article, word frequency does not show “women” or “gender” in our selected local African newspaper when including the keyword “China.” (see Figure 1) Several possible explanations are: 1) Chinese energy projects in Africa hire more male employees than female ones so there is a lack of presence of women in energy-related topics 2) the keywords “education” and “training” may implicitly comprise female participation in China’s energy engagement in Africa since education is traditionally viewed as a female occupation in the Chinese context 3) local African newspapers deemphasize women participation in the energy sector. Regardless of the possible explanations, we can safely conclude that social values such as “women participation” and “female empowerment” are missing in the Chinese development approach in Africa. Energy related Chinese education and professional skill training programs in Africa are more likely to focus on personal realization of economic independence rather than on women’s individual transformation.
In contrast, the Western approach, mainly led by the United States, utilizes its public-private partner resources to insert its “soft” power quite effectively in this African development battlefield. For instance, Power Africa, a US-led government partnership, has been making efforts to achieve gender equality in and through Africa’s energy sector investments and has been building capacity support programs. For another instance, the Climate Gender Equity Fund, awarded three local organizations advancing gender-equitable climate action in Africa in 2023.
Undoubtedly, abundant renewable energy resources exist in Sub-Saharan Africa. Without sustainable and resilient energy infrastructure, production and consumption of those resources could not be achieved, let alone job creation and employment opportunities for African women in the energy sector. From this perspective, government-led Chinese energy development approach solves one of the continent’s fundamental problems. Meanwhile, as I end this article, I can’t stop thinking of the excitement and joy from a Zimbabwe-born black girl who works in South Africa as a cashier . I met her at a clothing store I frequented in a white South African dominated neighbourhood. “Female empowerment and women representation, you know, we gonna power up.” She knew I am a Chinese who went to South Africa from the United States. I guess the Western development style works equally effectively, particularly to inspire black African women.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the International Development LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Featured image: Women work together on solar lighting circuit boards in South Africa. Image credit: UN Women via Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
