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Community leaders, builders, and dreamers gathered to discuss a vision for the future. One in which the people, the planet, and its institutions can find balance and address the challenges of tomorrow, offering a reminder that, despite a lack of administrative support, there is important work to be done and people motivated to do it.

Africa is rich in natural resources, yet it continues to face serious challenges in renewable energy. Despite its vast renewable energy potential, the continent struggles to generate enough power to meet its population's needs. Meanwhile, critical minerals like lithium are being extracted from countries like Zimbabwe and exported to fuel the green energy revolution in the developed world, leaving many Africans wondering who is really benefiting from their resources.

Moloi’s urban heat struggles mirror those of  2 million, mainly Black households, living in slums across South Africa’s cities. A local study, published in Bloomberg last month, released damning findings that Johannesburg city’s slums (where folks of color live) are 6 degrees Celsius hotter than wealthier suburbs. 

The role that venture capital will play in developing early-stage clean energy technologies is likely to mirror its scale in developing AI, internet companies, and social media platforms. While many of the hallmarks of VC remain the same, including long-shot bets, radical new technologies, and high potential returns, many of the challenges are new.

The Group of 20 (G20) gathering of the world's most powerful economies (excluding the US), kicked off in Johannesburg at the end of November. The host, President Cyril Ramaphosa, is a billionaire with deep coal roots and as a corporate investor in mines. He is trumpeting one of the summit’s main themes as breaking the world, especially the Global South, from the curse of ‘extractive colonialism’ and unleashing a wave of ‘green jobs’.

The convening of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, posed a significant challenge to the participation of many young people worldwide due to the high cost of travel and accommodation and the difficulty of reaching the conference site. This was clearly reflected in the decline of youth attendance from the Middle East and North Africa this year, pushing youth movements and coalitions to search for alternative ways to influence the process.

South Africa’s biggest C02-emmiting firms are caught in a PR bind. They are accused of working to ‘delay, dilute or derail’ Net-Zero goals in Africa’s wealthiest economy. When confronted, they struggle with vague denials. In May, a report titled ‘The Obstruction Playbook’ reveals the sophisticated, yet subtle tactics some of South Africa’s biggest corporates deploy to frustrate the climate pledges made by the Just Energy Transition Plan committed to by South Africa in 2021.

Zambia is part of the Africa Minigrids Program (AMP), a UNDP initiative focused on driving private-sector assessment of solar minigrids. They are doing this by implementing cost-reduction strategies and promoting innovative business models. The AMP is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented in partnership with RMI and the African Development Bank.

Efforts to reduce emissions through the adoption of renewable energy have revealed new vulnerabilities in energy security. As countries shift away from oil-driven conflicts, they are becoming enmeshed in the geopolitics of critical minerals, trading one form of dependence for another.

Just steps away from the Pyramids of Giza stands the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) — the largest archaeological museum in the world dedicated to a single civilization. Beyond preserving ancient history, the museum also offers a modern model of sustainability in museum design and management. It has become the first green museum in Africa and the Middle East, after receiving the EDGE Advanced Certificate for Green Buildings in 2024.

The country aims to become a major player in the global copper market, even as pressure mounts from the mining sector to amend the Glacier Law, raising concern over the environmental impacts in mountain regions.

COP30 has two weeks for parties to discuss and deliver on adaptation. As the IPCC notes, climate change is progressing more rapidly than we can adapt. With the summit starting next Monday in Brazil, it is worth recalling that the GGA framework was initially proposed by Latin America, specifically by Argentina, and later adopted by the Parties at COP28.