Energy Dialogues 2: Energy and Green Transition in Africa

Although the energy transition is often implemented as a top-down strategy, framed as a singular and global path towards decarbonised futures, anthropology has shown that the territories targeted by such interventions are far more than passive recipients.

For this reason, in the second edition of the Energy Dialogues organised by the ENERGEO Project, we aim to explore the kinds of transitions and forms of agency that emerge in the dilemmas brought about by the energy transition when experienced from the perspective of the Global South. In this session, we will focus onon two territories located in the south and east of Africa – a region that, for centuries, has been embedded within the global structure of extractivist logics (of people, resources, and energy).

Asking what is happening in Africa not only allows us to interrogate the extent to which colonial histories are entangled with the paradoxes of green policies from the Global North, but also opens up space to recognise the conditions and possibilities being woven through the lived experience of local communities in the South. This is a crucial consideration in envisioning alternative futures within today’s climate and energy conjuncture.

Hybrid session: Tuesday 27 may (14H -16h)

Onsite: Room B226, 2nd floor of Building 4. (ISCTE)
Online via Zoom: LINK

We will be joined by Eric Cezne (University of Leiden) and Amarilli Varesio (University of Milan-Bicocca). Eric is a scholar whose long-term ethnographic work focuses on coal extraction and recent green hydrogen projects in Mozambique, within the broader dilemmas of the global Green Transition. Amariilli, a doctoral researcher will present her fieldwork on the storage economy of Uganda (circulation, reuse, repair and recycling of lead acid ant lithium ion batteries) and its multiple implications for a sustainable and inclusive future.