 Thank you very much, Provost Beth Winkelston and Professor Tukufu Zuberi and all of the very kind and hospitable professors and friends and colleagues that have met within the past hour or so. Thank you very much. I think the hospitality was so warm that I really felt that I ought to have been here a lot sooner. I really must thank you very much and also for the tour of the museum. I was really quite an eye-opener. Thank you very much indeed. I'm also grateful to the Africa Center for Africana Studies of the University of Pennsylvania for the kind invitation to speak on energy transition in Africa as a matter of fact, the topic is actually energy transition in Africa, although there will be components of the just transition. I have in the past few months, both in speaking and even writing about this and related issues, in thinking or perhaps approaching the subject from the point of view of a just transition, which perhaps explains why the topic displayed is energy transition, the just transition. That is the broad notion that the burdens of climate change and its mitigation must be fairly and equitably shared between African countries who are, as we all know, the least emitters, but the worst sufferers of the consequences and of course the least prepared for the consequences of climate change and the developed economies, who of course we know are the worst emitters and who are far better resourced to deal with the consequences of climate change. But while this climate justice point of view is crucial, that is the concept of a just transition, while it's important, it nevertheless often leads to the conclusion that the only options open to Africa are adaptation and lately loss and damage compensation. In other words, almost every conversation around a just transition would almost invariably lead to saying, well, the solution is some adaptation and perhaps some compensation in terms of loss and damage. So for African countries, the remedy that climate justice often appears to present is rather narrow adaptation or loss of damage, as I've said, but for African countries, the challenge that is as important as containing climate change is energy poverty, which essentially means the lack of access to energy for electricity, for cooking, for heating, for cooling, etc. And how this inhibits any real chances of growth or job opportunities. Of course, we all know from empirical evidence that the availability of energy directly correlates with income, wealth and development, both at the individual and the societal level. And the energy poverty issue in Africa, as some show some of us already aware, is huge. Over 1.3 billion people in Africa are serviced by an installed capacity of about 244 gigawatts, which is less than the 248 gigawatts that 83 million Germans have access to. So Sub-Saharan Africa remains also the only region in the world which has the largest number now of people without access to clean cooking fuels and technologies, 19 out of the 20 countries within the lowest clean cooking access rates are in Africa. So for Africa, the crucial question in the energy transition conversation is how does the continent develop? How does the continent provide well-paying jobs and decent livelihoods for its growing population within the globally agreed carbon constraints? And those carbon constraints, as you know, the Paris agreements, the Kigali Accord more recently, the Kyoto Protocol for Developed Economies and Renewed Energy Standards, etc. Those are the constraints that we've all agreed to stay within. The straight answer is that there does not seem to be a pathway. There isn't a pathway for Africa to provide for its populations, provide well-paying jobs, provide opportunities, etc. If we stay within the globally agreed constraints, this is because the historical pathway of growth to upper middle income status that has been attained today by the wealthier countries of the world was by the use of carbon-intensive energy sources. But such a growth path is not available to African countries, at least not within the global planetary boundaries. The global carbon budget, as they say, simply would not allow it. Please bear with me, there are a few sustainability jargons that I might use, and I'm sure that only those of us who are interested enough in climate change may be aware of some of these jargon. But global planetary boundaries, for example, refers to the concept that was developed just in 2009, that there are certain limits or thresholds in the Earth's natural systems that if crossed could lead to irreversible changes and potentially catastrophic consequences for human civilization and the biosphere as a whole. So those boundaries, which we've set, these priority boundaries, if we set for ourselves, we assume that if Africa were to go the same pathway of carbon-intensive development, then of course it would be impossible for us to, for the rest of the world, to reach its targets for zero carbon emissions by 2050 and all of that. As a matter of fact, some of the information that we have, some of the research that's been done, shows that if Africa were to go the same carbon-intensive path as the wealthier countries have gone, it could add actually 12 gigatons of CO2E emissions annually by 2050. And that, of course, would put global net zero by that time well outside of reach. So if all we did was to just go the same pathway, just do the same things that everyone else has done to get to upper-middle income status, then it would be impossible for the world to achieve net zero by 2050. So the inconvenient truth here, if one may borrow that expression, is that beyond being treated as victims, whose problems will they delve with somewhere later on in the food chain, Africa's own growth and development is not really being seriously accommodated in the global energy transition conversation. It just isn't. Yet a strategic key to attaining global net zero by 2050 may well lie in seeing Africa from a different paradigm, not merely as a victim, but possibly as a solution. And I've been greatly helped in coming to this conclusion by involvement that I've had in recent months with some of the very great work of advocacy and proof of concept that's been done by James Wangi and Kali Nguyen, who form what is called the Climate Action for Africa, or CAPA. And they've done quite great work in this area and have taken a lot from a lot of their conclusions, a lot of work they've done in my material for this particular presentation. So beyond climate justice, beyond just saying Africa is a victim, let's take care of that problem, may lie a real opportunity for Africa and the world. And this opportunity is the distinct possibility of climate positive growth for Africa. In other words, a paradigm where Africa pursues a climate positive or carbon negative path to middle income status and beyond. And of course, there is really no difference between climate positive or carbon negative. They mean one and the same thing. And this contains in and of itself part of the solution to the global net zero ambitions of the world, because if, as is the case, some countries will not meet their net zero targets by 2050, then some significant portion of the world must be climate positive or net negative for global net zero to be achievable. Put differently, since many regions are already off track to achieve net zero by 2050, some other regions must fill the gap. If global targets must be met, some other regions must fill that gap. A recently released IPCC report notes that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have already made our world 1.10 centigrade warmer. And we are, as a global community, not on track to limit warming to 1.50 degrees centigrade or 2 degrees centigrade, as targeted under the Paris agreements. So Africa, with its current low carbon footprints and limited legacy infrastructure, is in the best position to do that. Let's just examine that argument more closely. Africa's endowments, renewable energy, natural resources and a young workforce, present a compelling set of circumstances for several pathways to climate positive growth. Now these pathways include the following. The first is in low emissions, consumption and production, low emissions, consumption and production. I'm going to come back to that. The point being that Africa can, instead of going the carbon intensive path to providing energy, goods and services for its own needs, can actually take full advantage of green technologies and practices. It's the distinct advantage that Africa can actually pursue a green course of growth without worrying about costly legacy infrastructure. This would, of course, mean a wide range of changes in eating, living, city designs, for instance, transportation, use of electric cars. Different changes in habits must occur. And of course, there are so many things going on already, of course. One example is a project in Kenya with the use of low-cost bioethanol-fueled cook stoves. These are already in use with an off-take reaching, as of 2021, almost 300,000 of these cook stoves up from about 50,000 just two years earlier. And it's estimated that this could mean over one million metric tons of CO2E in avoided emissions annually, just using these cook stoves, just using this number of cook stoves. Of course, that can increase, it can increase every year, it can increase to any number. And then there's the additional benefit that the stoves generate high-quality carbon credits which are sold in the global carbon markets. The second pathway is that having recognized the fact that global zero carbon ambitions cannot be realized without intentional carbon removal technologies and practices, Africa can actually ramp up her own potential to remove carbon at scale through a combination of plant, land use and ecosystem management and the engineered removal technologies. Already Africa's large carbon sinks currently store years of global emissions and the abundant supply of unused agricultural waste is already available as biomass for clean energy production and soil improvement. The third pathway is that with its abundant reserves of renewable energy and raw materials, Africa can become a hugely competitive green manufacturing and energy hub for the world that could actually accelerate greening of global industry. For example, by onshore processing of 110 million tons of bauxite to aluminium, and that is currently being exported as raw bauxite from Africa to Europe and Asia, but doing this using renewable energy between 1.3 to 1.5 gigatons of CO2 emissions can be avoided annually just by doing the processing onshore, just by processing bauxite onshore. You can actually save that much in CO2 emissions. And that is the same as processing lithium within the mining locality. Already some of that is happening. In Carduna, for example, in Nigeria, there's a lithium processing factory which has been built. The whole idea, of course, is that aside from mining the lithium, the lithium will also be processed onshore. Zimbabwe recently also in December 2022, introduced its own policy on local processing of lithium. So Africa also has the technical potential to produce 21 billion tons worth of hydrogen annually as compared to Europe's potential of 0.67 billion tons. And as green hydrogen costs fall, African manufacturing locations may become even more competitive in a range of related value chains, for example, for ammonia, for fertilizers and e-fuels as well. So the paradox, if you like, of an energy poor continent becoming the green industrial powerhouse of the world is easily resolvable, and it must be. Energy poverty can only be resolved if there is a significant investment in renewable energy. That can only happen if we create the energy-intense anchor demand that makes the investment in additional renewable energy bankable. We have to create that anchor demand to make that additional investment bankable. Therefore, it is not which comes first. It's not whether renewable energy generation capacity comes first or industrial deployment comes first. Both must be developed concurrently. With industrial anchor demand, African countries can make the greed investments and create the cross-subsidy opportunities to serve the unserved and underserved retail users. In addressing energy poverty, it is much more straightforward than some of what we are made to believe. So the purported choice between expanded retail energy access and industrial development is a false one, because industrial development will make investments in retail access possible. So it's not one or the other. It's actually both working together. How about the dependence of countries like mine, like Nigeria, on oil and gas, and of course the implications of that for emissions? I think that the use of gas as a transition fuel, and I emphasize transition fuel, will not significantly derail our commitment to carbon negative growth. Nigeria's energy transition plan attempts to chart an energy transition pathway which has at its bedrock the development of renewable energy, specifically solar energy. The plan is to develop 250 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2050. And that plan outlines the decarbonization strategies in the area of power, oil and gas, transportation, etc. It also mitigates against the medium to long-term job losses in an industry that has dominated our economy for decades. So we have to take account of that also, what we do with the job losses and the energy transition plan takes that into account. It also recommends the role of gas as a transition fuel to balance large influxes of solar power on the grid. It's also of course a cheaper and relatively cleaner option for the base load power, for base load power for industry. So today, just to explain that as quickly as possible, today renewable energy has not been shown to have sufficient base load to power industry. Of course you need loads and loads of renewable energy to be able to do so. So gas has that base load and besides, gas is useful also to ensure that the grid remains steady when you are using multiple sources of energy. And all of this of course is happening as we watch the cost of solar batteries plunge. And indeed the cost of solar batteries, the cost is actually plunging and even in the past 10 years alone, the past five years, we've seen a tremendous drop in the price of solar batteries and we expect that that will happen and continue to happen. There are also practical ways in which gas, especially propane, will breach the gap before the full use of renewables is commercially practical. To illustrate the point, recently some discussions have been going on, on decommissioning of industrial scale diesel and petrol generators that are used at the moment by base station operators of telecommunications companies in Nigeria. So the telecommunications companies have these operators who operate their base stations, the base stations they use for their systems. And thousands of these base stations are powered 24-7 by diesel generators. So a proposal that was made for complete replacement of these diesel generators with solar power and batteries met with a challenge. The service level agreements that the base station operators have with the telcos is simple. We just want 24-7 power, no downtime, that's a service level agreement. Now using solar power alone today with necessary storage facilities will be far too expensive. So the compromise that may now be reached and as I said, the conversation is ongoing is that we'll start as an interim measure until the cost of solar batteries of course reduce sufficiently, we'll start with a hybrid power source, solar energy and propane powered generators. Propane as I've said is a much lower carbon emitter than diesel or petrol and propane or LPG is already in use for clean cooking stoves in Nigeria and several different parts of Africa. So there are many practical short term uses of gas that are made more attractive because of its availability and relative cleanness as compared to other fossil fuels. So considering the three pathways to climate positive growth that I've outlined and I will just repeat them in case anyone has fallen asleep while I was saying talking. The first is Africa pursuing an essentially green cause of growth, low emission consumption and production. That's the first pathway. The second is Africa being the carbon removal center of the world. Both by offering natural carbon sinks which we have in abundance already and the development of carbon removal technologies. The third is becoming the most competitive green manufacturing and energy hub for the world. The proposition that Africa could then bring to the table or if you like a grand bargain that Africa and the international community may make is as follows. A climate positive growth framework based on the premise that the world needs Africa to attain its net zero ambitions. Just to elaborate, a climate positive growth framework is also both an answer to the global need for massively net negative emissions in order to attain its net zero ambitions and at the same time is a solution to Africa's growth imperatives, energy access, jobs and decent livelihoods for millions. Now the success of this framework will depend on certain key actions, some of which are within the control of African states and others, the control of the international community. On their part, African countries will formulate clear science based national strategies for climate positive growth. The strategies will be linked to specific targets for net negative contributions to global emissions. There must also be accompanying policy and regulatory environment that will enable the realization of the strategy and by such means encourage needed investments. For this, we can build on the Kigali Accord which is an accord which has moved us several steps further, especially after Paris and the following and the agreements following it. The international community on its part will undertake to make the required investments in Africa's renewable energy and work out trade rules that will give access to favorable low emissions production and also facilitate the rapid development of fair and equitable carbon markets. That's quite an issue by itself, and I won't want to take you too much, of course, but equitable, fair and just carbon markets are important. I work at the moment with the African carbon markets initiative and part of our task is to see how we can actually deal with the rest of the world to work out fair systems by which the African carbon markets could operate effectively. Africa, from which highly competitive carbon returns will come, can only see the capital influx if the bottlenecks to fully functional carbon markets, such as verification, etc., are worked on. At the moment, most of the verifying bodies, the bodies that verify carbon credits, that verify the value of carbon credits, of course, are based in the global Northern countries. But if Africa is going to be the hub for many of these useful carbon credits, then we need to have much more verification companies actually located in Africa. The international community must also ensure some degree of market access to African countries so we can sell low embedded emission products into the global markets in an equitable way. And the financing for this purpose ought to be appropriately nuanced to some amount a lot of the competition inhibiting risk premiums and cost of capital challenges that Africa faces. A good mix of development finance will be important alongside patient and flexible financing instruments, some of which have been used successfully already for financing renewables. There are many options aside from the conventional. We have renewable auctions which are taking place practically all over the world now, including Africa. Debt for climate swaps are being proposed and of course, carbon markets. There are of course very many practical issues to be worked out if this grand bargain is to happen, including intermittency of solar and wind power, the systems integration issues, cost of storage of renewable energy, financing and of course, the notoriously difficult problems around changing global trade rules, etc. But these are challenges that can with a clear sense of the existential urgency of the goals that we want to achieve be surmounted and the incentive to make these proposals work is the recognition that Africa can actually be the key to meeting the global net zero targets that we've set for ourselves. Thank you very much for listening.