Doubled-edged: how the energy transition could destroy African forests

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t is the greatest paradox of our age: in attempting to solve the problem of climate change, we are turning Africa into the planet’s biggest mine and quarry and destroying its forests and carbon sinks. 

Africa is seeing massive destruction of its natural habitat. In 2020, the continent had 636.64 million hectares of forest, accounting for 16% of the world’s forested areas. Some 46.5% is located in eastern and southern Africa, 48% in western and central Africa and 5.5% in northern Africa. 

The continent witnessed the greatest annual rate of net forest loss of any region in the world, at 3.94 million hectares, between 2010 and 2020, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Africa’s rate of net forest loss has increased in each of the three decades since 1990, and has jumped from 3.28 million hectares in 1990. 

Four countries in Africa are among the top ten globally in terms of their annual net loss of forest. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is in second place and losing more than 1.1 million hectares a year, behind only Brazil, which loses 1.5 million hectares a year. Angola is in fourth spot at more than 555,000 hectares, Tanzania is fifth with 421,000 hectares and Mozambique is tenth with 223,000 hectares.  

Across the continent, an area the size of the Netherlands is being lost to deforestation every year. Between 1990 and 2020, eastern and southern Africa lost around 15% of the carbon stored in their forests while western and central Africa lost 14%. By 2050, Africa is expected to lose 50% of its birds and mammals.  

Africa has been losing its woods and forests for a long time and the reasons are myriad. A lot of it is down to population growth and urbanisation. The continent has the planet’s highest fertility rate at 4.8 births per woman, compared with a global average of 2.5 births, and infant mortality rate has plummeted, from just under 200,000 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1950 to 42.8 this year.

Similarly, the continent is set for rapid urban growth. By the end of this century, Africa will be home to 13 of the planet’s 20 biggest urban areas, up from just two today.  

Undoubtedly, the demographics are putting a lot of pressure on Africa’s forests. Wood fuels are by far the most widely used method of cooking in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 90% of the region’s population relies on firewood or charcoal. Charcoal is mostly used in urban centres while firewood is the predominant form of wood fuel used in rural areas. 

However, Africa’s forests are now bearing another overwhelming pressure; the mining of the critical metals needed for the world’s energy transition and for the global technology revolution.  

At least 30 times as much lithium, nickel and other key minerals could be required by the electric car and battery storage industries by 2040 to meet global climate targets, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Similarly, the rise of low-carbon power generation to meet climate goals means a tripling of mineral demand from this sector by 2040. 

Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has surged by 50% as the share of renewables in new investment has increased.  The IEA declared in May 2021 that we are witnessing a massive industrial conversion that marks a “shift from a fuel-intensive to a material-intensive energy system”.  

An electric car uses six times the amount of battery metals compared with a conventional car, according to the IEA. An onshore wind farm requires nine times more mineral resources than an equivalent gas plant; an offshore wind plant requires 12 times. To get to net-zero, Europe will require up to 26 times the amount of rare earth metals in 2050 compared with today. 

A new scramble for Africa's resources is under way, made more urgent by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as both countries are important global sources of critical metals. Africa is abundant in critical materials, but they are largely unexplored. 

Major global powers are already pushing for deals. Capital is being attracted to a region where labour is inexpensive and environmental protections are virtually non-existent. However, the world cannot afford a race to the bottom in critical metals. 

Africa has some of the world’s biggest deposits of minerals essential to the energy transition: nickel, cobalt, graphite, lithium and rare earth elements. For example, it produces around 80% of the total global supply of platinum, 50% of manganese and two-thirds of cobalt. Guinea alone produces more than 20% of the world’s bauxite used in aluminium. 

The continent is also thought to have some of the greatest remaining untapped mineral reserves. Because of a lack of systematic geological mapping and exploration, the full extent of the region’s mineral base remains unknown, even though the race for Africa’s mineral wealth has been happening for over two centuries.  

Supposedly, one of the greatest achievements of the COP26 climate conference in November 2021 was the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use. Around 145 countries – including the US, China and EU member states – committed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. 

However, 2030 is too far off; by that time a lot of Africa’s forests will have already been lost irrevocably. At COP27 – which takes place in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt on 6–18 November – world leaders must go further and put an immediate brake on Africa’s deforestation. This conference has been billed as Africa’s COP and it should be the one in which the region’s forests are protected once and for all. 

In particular, the forests of the Congo River basin – the world’s second-largest tropical forest, a huge carbon store and one of the most biodiverse places on the planet – represent an absolute priority. The DRC is still providing industrial logs to Europe, China and North America. Deforestation on an industrial scale is taking place there for a number of reasons, but one of the main drivers is the over-exploitation of timber for export and illegal logging. 

Mining for the needs of the energy transition should create an economic opportunity for Africa, but it is far from certain that it does. Most of the minerals produced in Africa are exported as ore without processing in the region. Africans do not really benefit from the ‘value added’ processes despite almost one-quarter of the region’s gross domestic product being dependent on nature. Instead, the monetisation of the continent’s mineral resources happens in the Middle East, the Far East, North America and Europe. 

Africa’s habitats are being ruined for questionable value for the region’s inhabitants. Rehabilitation of the land once the mining has been completed is supposed to happen, but in many African countries this process is poorly supervised. The quality of life of many of the communities close to quarries and mines is declining owing to noise and particulate pollution. Places of astonishing natural beauty are being sacrificed 

This process does not just affect new mines; it is all the accompanying new roads and railways cutting a scythe through forests and savannah lands that are a cause for concern as well. In many cases, it is only the elites in the capital cities that really benefit, and, of course, the mining companies headquartered in Europe, North America and China. 

Western consumers and investors are increasingly calling for companies to source minerals that are sustainably and responsibly produced. However, that is no easy task as most mineral supply chains are highly complex affairs. For example, aluminium smelted in Europe could come from alumina refined in the Middle East, which in turn could originate from bauxite mined in Guinea or Ghana. Most Western companies just do not take into account African deforestation in their environmental, social and governance strategies. That must change, and fast. 

Furthermore, without efforts to improve environmental and social performance, it could be challenging for consumers to exclude poor-performing minerals as sufficient quantities of high-performing minerals may not exist to meet demand. The world is going to need a whole lot more minerals in the future and it will be hard to keep up with all the value chains. It will need minerals from mines that are not environmentally sensitive, as well as those that are.