Executive Summary

The intertwined Climate, Biodiversity and Development crises require considerable change and innovation to achieve an inclusive and sustainable global economy. Green technology has a critical role to play in responding to this. As Africa's infrastructure and development gap is significant, green technology can provide resilient, climate-smart interventions. For example, hundreds of millions of Africa’s smallholder farmers depend heavily on rainfed agriculture. Climate- and nature-smart water, energy and agricultural technologies could enhance production, build resilience and help to improve food security while supporting ecosystem services. However, while the global green technology market has enormous financial value and, together with other frontier technologies, is expected to reach USD2,1 trillion in 2030, most green technology development happens outside of Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean are the least ready to exploit these technologies.

If harnessed, global growth in green technology could offer opportunities for job creation and entrepreneurial activities in Africa. As young people will bear the brunt of the climate and biodiversity crises and have the highest unemployment rate in Africa, their agency and capabilities can be mobilised to provide green technology solutions. Green technology adoption can also create much-needed jobs through the emergence of new firms and industries that develop and trade these technologies. For this to happen, firms require not only the skills and know-how, as well as access to capital necessary to develop and sell green technologies, but an enabling regulatory, policy and infrastructural environment.

To better understand the potential for youth employment in green technology in Africa, this scoping report examines the current landscape of existing green technology policies and programmes, including their focus on youth employment and entrepreneurship. It does so through desk-based research, including some policy content and coherence checking.

The study found that green technology is a broad concept that needs to be more consistently applied within policies and programmes. Often conflated with climate technologies, green technologies, in fact, respond to all three of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. It is important to keep the emphasis on all three areas: Each presents opportunities for youth employment and empowerment.

When considering the economic sectoral focus in the published literature on green technology and Africa, as well as certain country-level green technology policies, the study found that energy receives the most focus, followed by Agriculture. Energy is elevated because of the role of fossil fuels in driving emissions and the associated global push to transition from these. In Africa, extending energy access is also a critical development need. Agriculture’s importance relates to its central position in rural development and food security and the fact that so many Africans are involved in Agriculture both as a commercial activity and informally, for subsistence purposes.

Findings on the green technology programme overview indicate that some progress has been made in linking these sectors together at a spatial level, together with water and environment, but more can be done to drive an integrated sectoral and spatial approach to green technology development. A Scopus search also clearly identifies the gap in published research on green technology in Africa in terms of employment and entrepreneurship impacts and potential. And while there are a number of research and development programmes on technology and innovation, including green technology, at African universities and think tanks, more can be done to link these to implementation substantively.

The scoping report also found that while there is a level of integration of green technology into certain African youth employment policies (e.g. in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda) as well as some youth employment programmes, the corollary does not apply. That is, the main green technology programmes in Africa considered in this review - the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), Green Climate Fund (GCF), Adaptation Fund (AF) and Internationale Klimaschutz Initiative (IKI) - do not include youth employment in their design. Similarly, the Technology Needs Assessments (TNA) methodology does not explicitly provide for youth inclusion.

The situation is different when it comes to incubators and innovation clusters for entrepreneurs in Africa. Here, there are several green technology start-ups, including many with links to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). ICTs and green technology have strong interplays. One opportunity for further creating youth employment in green technology could be through the use of ICTs. ICTs’ numerous applications in green technology include bridging data gaps for diagnosis, monitoring and evaluation, creating online platforms for marketing and live-time transacting, etc. One example: the African Development Bank (AfDB) has a specific programme on climate-smart agriculture where digital applications are a key element. Connectivity and youth skills in data sciences need to be strengthened to realise this potential.

The Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy (CCRD) is one of the main green technology policies of the African Union (AU). Its priority activities include indigenous people and indigenous knowledge. Here, indigenous knowledge is explicitly linked to Climate Services’ development and agriculture.  However, despite its ability to provide culturally and contextually appropriate technology and unlock innovation, indigenous knowledge is not part of youth employment policies or programmes scoped in this assignment. Nor do indigenous green technologies emerge as a focus area in the green technology programmes or incubators (except the Innovation Hub and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s work with traditional healers, both in South Africa). This is also a gap and opportunity. The update due to the current AU Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy, expiring in 2024, presents a good chance for improved policy integration of these issues, which are critical for Africa’s future.

Another opportunity identified in this scoping report is for the procurement of locally manufactured green technology inputs and services – linked to existing major green technology programmes – in a manner that improves African firms’ capabilities. Manufacturing currently receives little green technology policy or programmatic focus, but the manufacturing of green technologies and local green technology services could support sustainable employment growth linked to clear demand drivers, creating opportunities for Africa’s youth. The GEF, GCF, AF and IKI programmes in Africa, and country TNAs, provide valuable data sources on technology needs and programmatic and funding focus. A more detailed mapping exercise not only of green technology inputs into these programmes but of national and regional capabilities to meet these now and in the future could unlock significant opportunities for local firms and employment creation. 

Several high-level trends and characteristics emerge from this scoping report, signalling opportunities for improved policy coherence and programmatic design for youth employment and entrepreneurship in green technology in Africa. Country or regional-level studies could result in a more precise gap and opportunity identification, including potential links between green technology and youth employment in ICTs, indigenous knowledge and the manufacturing of local inputs for major funded green technology programmes on the continent.