Europe pledges $600 billion to clean energy projects in Africa

“From the beginning, the Global Gateway has been described as an attempt by the EU to compete with the Belt and Road Initiative’s offshore infrastructure investment funds,” says Gabriele Rosanna, an associate fellow at the Institute of International Affairs in Rome. “However, at €300 billion until 2027, it is a David versus Goliath-style project.” China has already begun investing heavily in clean energy in Africa, with far fewer restrictions. “The federation operates within a system of rules, risks and subtle constraints unknown to Chinese centralization,” Rosanna says.

According to A He studies From Griffith University in Australia, energy-related investments under the Belt and Road Initiative in the first half of 2025 were the highest since 2013, when the initiative was launched – and it was Africa, at $39 billion, that received the highest value contracts in the sector. A Latest report The Ember Energy Research Center revealed that China exported 15 gigawatts of solar panels to Africa in the year before June 2025, an increase of 60% year-on-year of these imports. It is not certain that all of these devices will be installed – some of which could act as trade triangulation to circumvent tariffs – but in any case, Beijing is putting itself in a position to benefit from the continent’s green transition.

But Europe is committed to seizing this opportunity as well. “Over the past two years, competitiveness has gradually, but with increasing conviction, become the main word on the European policy agenda, alongside defence,” says Rosanna. “International cooperation has also been reinvented with the aim of strategic independence, and placed at the service of the Union’s global expectations, at a time when Europe, in light of the large-scale reorganization of the trade balance due to the US-China challenge, must accelerate the diversification of its supply and trade chains.”

The European Union is not alone in feeling the need to respond to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Ahead of President Donald Trump’s second term, the United States also felt compelled to act. In 2021, the administration of President Joe Biden announced an international infrastructure programme, the Build Back a Better World programme, which was expanded the following year to include the G7 and renamed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI). Among the main focus areas of the PGI initiative were energy and Africa: in fact, two solar power plants in Angola, a wind energy and storage system in Kenya, and a nickel processing plant for batteries in Tanzania. back On the list of early American projects.

But perhaps the most important infrastructure project that the West seeks to achieve in Africa is the infrastructure project Lobito PassIt is a railway line that will connect copper deposits in Zambia and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola. Copper is an electrifying metal; Lithium, a key component in batteries – both essential raw materials for the green transition, the supply of which is currently dominated by China.

So, the African continent has now become a battleground between the great powers that are primarily interested in its resources. But with a growing young population – in the sub-Saharan region, the population will grow at an estimated rate 79 percent over the next three decades– And with an energy system dominated by fossil fuels, decarbonization in Africa will be essential for net zero success. “The choices Africa makes today shape the future of the entire world,” von der Leyen said during the September announcement.

This story originally appeared on Wired Italy It was translated from Italian.