East Asia Forum posted on 30 January 2026 an article titled "'Growing by Greening' and the Future of China-Africa Cooperation" by Xunpeng Shi, University of Technology Sydney, and Muyi Yang, Ember, a global energy think tank.
China's energy projects in Africa have shifted from large fossil fuel investments to solar and wind initiatives. Nevertheless, there are challenges to the development of green energy that must be addr3ssed.
The New York Times published on 30 December 2025 an article titled "Cheap Solar Is Transforming Lives and Economies Across Africa" by Somini Sengupta and Gulshan Khan.
Rapidly falling prices for Chinese made solar panels and batteries are changing electricity production in Africa. Solar now generates about 10 percent of South Africa's electricity-generating capacity. Other African countries are following South Africa's lead while the United States focuses on fossil fuels. China is becoming the world's leader in renewable energy.
Atlantic Dialogues in Morocco posted an eleven-minute podcast recently titled "Control of Critical Minerals in Africa" with Amit Jain, director of the Centre for African Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
China dominates the extraction and processing of critical minerals from resource rich African countries, but the governments of most of those countries are failing to maximize the profit they could earn by negotiating for more processing to be done on the continent.
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.
