Geopolitics and Energy Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa: Local Impacts

From October 21st to October 25th, 2024, La Casa Encendida presents Geopolitics and Energy Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa: Local Impacts. The course explores the key issues surrounding the geopolitics of energy resources, with particular focus on the challenges posed by the growing commitment to renewable energy in countries such as Namibia, Zambia, and Kenya.

While the importance of fossil fuels and minerals from Sub-Saharan Africa in the current global neoliberal order is widely recognised, so too is the fierce competition for these resources among major powers, including the United States, European Union, China, Russia, and countries in the Gulf and Asia.

What is less well understood are the wide-ranging political, social, cultural, and gender-related impacts this competition has on African communities and their human rights, as well as the severe environmental consequences. This competition has gained a new dimension in the scramble for Africa’s reserves of minerals deemed essential for the energy transition—lithium, cobalt, copper, graphite, nickel, manganese, bauxite, and rare earth elements.