African countries face pressure to leave their fossil fuel resources untapped in favor of transitioning to renewable energy. While this is frequently framed as following global trends by shifting from fossil fuels like countries in the West, in reality for many African countries it implies ‘leapfrogging’ directly into sustainable energy.
The complications of this process will have profound impacts on African development. This means that more attention should be paid to how African journalists report on current climate change issues.
Africa has already made massive strides toward renewable energy, and it has the potential to be a future green energy superpower. Africa has more clean energy potential than any other continent: some 39% of the world’s clean energy potential.
However, telling this story in a way that resonates among audiences in African countries remains a challenge. Most African journalists don’t fully understand the seriousness of climate change issues and it now gets even more complicated when telling stories on ‘Just Transition’, a term that is fairly new in newsrooms.
Larger pressures are also at play. African nations are currently caught between the need to provide energy for their rapidly growing populations and the imperative to avoid using fossil fuel energy sources to do it, even as many rich countries are also rapidly buying up these same fossil fuels. Additionally, African leaders are lobbying to exploit the continent’s fossil fuel, in particular gas, reserves to address energy poverty on the continent.
Journalists in African countries telling this story face a changing landscape that sometimes demands unfamiliar skills.
Senior climate journalist Kimani Chege from Nairobi believes that just transition is not very well understood. In the same breath, climate reporting is quite wide and journalists find themselves reporting on any climate issue that comes to them. He also feels that few journalists recognize the need to have a discussion about the equitable distribution of climate interventions. Rather, they are sometimes reluctant to engage fully because the climate change discourse may at times sound like a political agenda.
Within the climate change space, ‘just transition’ is the globally acknowledged framework for managing the social and economic impacts of moving away from fossil fuel for energy generation, which is the primary cause of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, and subsequently climate change. With energy introduced into the equation, a just energy transition is one that ensures the benefits of shifting to a sustainable or ‘green economy’ are shared widely, while those countries, regions, industries, communities, and workers who stand to lose economically are adequately supported.
For Africa, integrating climate adaptation, energy access, and development is key.
In theory, the continent can use emergent green energy technology to overcome entrenched development backlogs while boosting development through new green economies. However, this would depend on forging development plans that put Africa’s green energy potential at the heart of development plans.
In telling a story that encapsulates the justice aspect of climate change, Aimable Twahirwa, a senior science journalist from Rwanda notes that it is important to adopt solutions-focused reporting on different topics like green mobility and beating plastic pollution by telling Africa’s climate story through an African lens and building on experiences and voices from communities affected by the climate crisis.
He adds that since most African countries are aiming at being fully powered by renewable energy, covering topics focusing on transitioning from fossil fuels should find ways to reflect local conditions in order to engage their audience directly.
Twahirwa points out that some journalists don’t necessarily focus on climate risk formulation in their reporting which pushes them to rely on Western framings.
This includes fearless reporting on challenges like the lack of sustainable funding mechanisms due to lapses in the global development financing system and resistance by developed economies to meeting their commitments under the UNFCCC.
Again, the resistance to renewables among African elites in favor of hydrocarbons and the limited availability of comprehensive and mutually supported renewables-focused economic development plans shared between African countries have to also be looked into to remove the barriers.
Kimani advises journalists telling the just transition story to remain focused on those affected by climate change and also explore all the areas touched by climate change in various news segments e.g. carbon trading for the business desk, climate justice in political news, and how climate affects sports, and all other beats.
He also cautions journalists against being climate activists but rather look for climate facts.
On the other hand, Twahirwa adds that journalists need to find ways to compete with political and sensational news while strengthening their capacity in understanding climate change issues.
The most important part of this work is to humanize climate in human interactions as a way to engage their audiences.
