Western-funded energy policies keeping 400 million Africans in the dark while strengthening China

A new joint paper from the Center for North American Prosperity and Security, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Prosperity, Not Poverty exposes how Western nations like the United States and Canada are perpetuating energy poverty across Africa while strengthening China’s geopolitical influence.

In (Dis)empowering Africa: How the West’s energy policies fuel poverty in the continent, Professor Brenda Shaffer documents how organizations funded by the West are starving sub-Saharan Africa of funding for fossil fuel development and instead forcing it to adopt inefficient and costly renewable energy sources – effectively condemning 400 million Africans to a poverty-stricken life without adequate electricity for even their basic needs.

While the West enjoys reliable power thanks to fossil fuels, the World Bank and International Energy Agency force Africans to settle for solar panels that work only hours daily. Half of sub-Saharan Africa lacks electricity access, and 80 percent cook with toxic biomass fuels that expose them to deadly smoke, killing more than 800,000 people per year.

“The World Bank and the United Nations development agencies prioritize lowering emissions over poverty reduction in Africa,” writes Shaffer. Western-funded agencies promote expensive, unreliable renewable energy while blocking cheaper natural gas projects that could power African development.

Shaffer exposes a devastating double standard that undermines the West’s moral authority and feeds anti-Western sentiment across the continent. By cutting fossil fuel funding, these policies create opportunities for Beijing to expand influence through energy partnerships that African nations desperately need.

“Western policymakers suggest that Africa can ‘leapfrog’ from traditional biomass energy to modern renewable energy,” writes Shaffer.

“However, there is no viable model or precedent… Today’s renewable energy cannot provide reliable electricity without a baseload of stable energy from natural gas, coal, or nuclear.”