More than a hundred international civil societies issued a statement on 19 May accusing France and the European Commission of endorsing a slew of African development projects without social, environmental, and gender safeguards.
Their statement came during the UNFCCC’s Climate Change Conference in Bonn Germany which took place from 8-18 May.
Some 19 projects were said to have been “against the wishes of several Africans on the AREI [Africa Renewable Energy Initiative] Board”, of which neither France nor the European Commission is formally a member.
“Decades of experience with development and climate finance shows us that letting rich countries make decisions for people living in developing countries is a surefire path to failure,” said Brandon Wu of ActionAid USA. “By trying to use their status as donors to push through pet projects and take control away from Africans, they are doing far more harm than good.”
Some of the projects already in operation have been rebranded as AREI projects, causing the group to suggest France and other developed economies broke their pledge to mobilise funds with new renewable energy capacity. They also questioned whether developed nations could expect to maintain the trust of African countries over challenger states such as China and India, both of which invest heavily in renewable energies.
A European Commission spokesperson told Development Finance the institution denies “any interference or imposition whatsoever on our African partners”. They added that the European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development had been invited to attend AREI Board meetings, at the board’s request, as one of its two non-African partners. These technical meetings resulted in a list of potential projects, 19 of which the AREI Board consensually agreed to endorse on 4 March 2017.
The spokesperson commented that contact between its experts and AREI takes place regularly “in the spirit of good cooperation and in order to support the initiative, including the development of the governance structure”.
An announcement of the initiative’s new head, Seyni Nafo of Mali, followed shortly after the resignation of the first director of the Initiative’s Independent Delivery Unit. The civil societies group welcomed Mr. Nafo’s appointment, though stressed that, under his watch, the initiative must resist the control of donors and maintain its principles of African ownership and transparency.
“AREI needs to remain people-centered in order to ensure a just energy transformation, and that requires strong criteria to avoid any corporate malfeasance in the operationalisation of its projects,” said Lidy Nacpil of the Asian People’s Movement on Debt & Development.