In this contention article, we look at recent events and narratives shaping formal green transition practices in Africa, and interrogate whether financing, demanded by both states and activists, will actually enable a recalibration in the power and energy relations on the continent. Our position is that, against the imperial scaffolding and unequal historical assemblages that are the foundation for the world today, forms of finance—whether as “loss and damages” or the “new global financing pact”—proposed by multiple African actors can serve to deflect and deny local impetus for structural change. We explore the counterinsurgent work of this financing through two key movements: the first is via discussing how energy transition narratives on the continent are increasingly framed as the opportunity for an agential “African Century,” rather than the continuation of racialized extractivism—business as usual. The second is through calling for more radical attention to that which is being off-staged in formal climate conversations: this is the expansion of state violence to enact a “green transition” and in response to communities’ resistance to forms of green coloniality.
Kimari et al. (Thu,) studied this question.