Foreign Policy published on 15 December 2023 an article titled "Fossil Fuel Nations Almost Sabotaged a Climate Deal that Could Save Africa" by Nathaniel Mong'are, senior advisor in Kenya on climate issues, and Abdoulie Ceesay, COP28 representative for Gambia.
Climate change threatens to render large areas of Africa uninhabitable within decades. At the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) major fossil fuel economies such as China and India ruled out calls for a fossil fuel phasedown and China and Russia shielded coal--the dirtiest of fuels--from criticism. They did this based on the argument that curbing fossil fuel production is detrimental to the economies of the Global South. For their part, the United States and Europe failed to commit adequate financing to support a crash program in energy transformation.
