{"id":5698,"date":"2023-06-13T14:35:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T14:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.powershiftafrica.org\/in-the-news\/letter-africa-can-decarbonise-but-it-must-first-decolonise-its-economy"},"modified":"2026-08-26T14:31:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:31:46","slug":"letter-africa-can-decarbonise-but-it-must-first-decolonise-its-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/in-the-news\/letter-africa-can-decarbonise-but-it-must-first-decolonise-its-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Africa can decarbonise, but it must first decolonise its economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/c87e1464-0cfe-79f7-58c4-81e9ba9e5e6c_1655106694.jpg?format=original\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>One thing is missing from David Pilling\u2019s \u201cCan Africa grow without fossil fuels?\u201d (The Big Read, June 2), namely a discourse about the underlying neocolonial model of economic development that assumes that we can somehow decarbonise a system that hasn\u2019t been decolonised yet.<br\/><br\/><\/strong>Post-colonial Africa suffers from three structural deficiencies: the lack of food sovereignty, energy sovereignty and high value-added manufacturing. These produce structural trade deficits, which in turn cause currency depreciation that makes all imports more expensive (imported inflation). The band-aid solution forces African governments to artificially stabilise their exchange rates by issuing more dollar- and euro-denominated debt. Hence Africa\u2019s external debt trap.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing is missing from David Pilling\u2019s \u201cCan Africa grow without fossil fuels?\u201d (The Big Read, June 2), namely a discourse about the underlying neocolonial model of economic development that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":5699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[25],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-5698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-news","tag-energy-transition"],"acf":{"url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6802,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5698\/revisions\/6802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5698"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powershiftafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=5698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}