It was recently announced that the Nigeria Exchange (NGX) Group had commenced corporate baseline assessments under its N-Zero initiative, ostensibly to help the corporate sector along in its quest for climate readiness and to position the sector or access to global green capital. The initiative, launched in January aims to transition businesses from climate pledges to practical execution through strategy formulation, emissions measurement, and carbon-market participation.
The “green capital movement” refers to the evolution of finance and entrepreneurship focused on sustainability — beginning with early conservationist business ideas in the 19th century, gaining political traction in the 1960s–70s through the Green movement, and transforming into modern climate finance mechanisms like carbon markets, green bonds, and ESG investing after the 1992 Rio (Brazil) Earth Summit.
Personally, I have always had some ambivalence towards the environmental movement, the reason being that the West only began to take the environment seriously after it had achieved mass prosperity through unconstrained industrial growth. For roughly two centuries starting from the mid-18th century to a bit later than the mid-20th century (with the period immediately after World War 2 till about the 1970s being a particularly booming period of industrial expansion and prosperity), the West embarked on a period of industrialization that paid little heed to the environment. Though the Green movement started gaining political traction in the 1960s-70s, and a reverence for the wild and the natural had come to reside at the heart of western culture in the same period, this reverence for nature came with a great reluctance on the part of many westerners to sacrifice little, if any of the material comforts brought by industrial growth.
Of course, one has to concede that scientific knowledge about the repercussions of unrestrained industrial growth powered by fossil fuels was rather scanty at the time. Still I think that it is important for us in Africa to remember that we are in a very different position from the West as regards industrialization. While the West has managed to secure the fruits of prosperity for the bulk of its population through industrialization, we in Africa are largely yet to start our industrialization journey as our post-independence attempts in the 1960s and 70s took a nose-dive alongside falling global commodity prices in the 1980s and 1990s, and the IMF-supported Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) embarked upon to bring economic stabilization led to waves of deindustrialization on the continent, the result being that the bulk of the African population continue to wallow in poverty.
I think it is also important to remember that energy drives development, and that in the pursuit of development in the face of environmental sustainability, there are trade-offs. In making those trades-offs, we don’t want to find ourselves in a situation of “Energy Poverty”. This is a situation where there isn’t enough energy to drive the levels of industrialization that would create well-paid jobs on such a scale that the bulk of Africans wallowing in poverty would be pulled out from it, a situation that could arise from an overreliance on green capital.
Green capital only provides funding for renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal etc.) projects. Now, renewables do not provide 24/7 baseload power. Heavy industries (steel, cement, mining) need continuous, high‑intensity power. Renewables alone cannot yet meet this demand reliably anywhere, let alone in Africa. An energy-mix that will make sense for Africa must still make ample provision for fossil fuels, with the most sensible option being natural gas.
Africa holds about 500 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven natural gas reserves. Nigeria alone has about 200 tcf, while Mozambique, Algeria, Egypt, and Tanzania also have large deposits. In theory, Africa’s gas reserves could supply the continent’s current energy needs for decades. However, the challenge is not reserves, but infrastructure: pipelines, LNG plants, power stations, and distribution grids. These are underdeveloped, and require funding to build them out. Green capital from the West is not going to fund gas infrastructure projects in Africa, hence the title of this article. Perhaps NGX and other concerned bodies should be looking East rather than West for capital.
China would probably be a good place to start. Despite massive investments in solar and wind, coal (arguably the most obnoxious of the fossil fuels) still accounts for around 55–60% of China’s electricity generation. It is hard to imagine China refusing to fund natural gas projects in Africa on the basis of moral indignation. That would only make them blatant hypocrites. By the way, though less than 15% of EU’s electricity generation is powered by coal, some coal plants were temporarily revived during the 2022 energy crisis, showing that when push comes to shove, the West preaching environmental sustainability to us will prioritize their material comfort over the environment. That is something we might want to think about. About 20% of US electricity generation is powered by coal, while its use is admittedly in long-term decline (same as Europe), some states still use coal heavily.
After China, comes India perhaps the next global giant waiting in the wings. They still finance gas projects, as do the Middle Eastern countries. Being a gas giant itself, Russia is another potential source of funding.
This might also be a time to begin to look seriously within. The African Union and regional blocs (ECOWAS, SADC) can pool resources for cross‑border pipelines and LNG terminals. Shared infrastructure lowers costs and increases bargaining power. Even more interestingly, we might just be dealing with a case of “starving in the midst of plenty.” What I mean by this is that there is a growing recognition that Africa now has a source of long-term development finance: Pension Funds. African pension funds are said to collectively manage an estimated pool of about $350–600 billion (This is a subject that will get fuller treatment in a future article). With some regulatory innovation, these funds could be unleashed in productive sectors such as infrastructure, housing and SMEs, as opposed to being parked in in domestic government securities and foreign assets (above 90% of the monies trapped in African pension funds are being invested this way).
I hope I haven’t given the impression of being an environmental skeptic, I am not. I just think that it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a more hard-nosed debate about it here in Africa rather than just meekly swallowing the West’s hook, line and sinker.
