“From the beginning, the global passage described as the Secretary of the European Union to Road Investment Investment Infrastructure. At the end of the style of David – in Goliath,” Gabriele Rosan, the Associate at the Institute for International Affairs in Rome. China has already largely invested in pure energy in Africa, and with farthe less restrictions. “The Union operates in the system of precise rules, roles and restrictions on unknown to Chinese centralism,” says Rosan.
According to the Study with Griffith, University in Australia, the Roads and Initiative in the first half of 2025 were the highest of 2013. year, when the initiative was initiated, with $ 39 billion, which had a great value agreement in this sector. The recent report from Energy Think Tank EMBER revealed that China performed 15GW solar panels in Africa in the year that led until 2025. June, 60 percent in the annual increase in such imports. It is not certain that all these devices will be installed – some could be a trade triangle for bypassing tariffs – but in any case, Beijing is positioned to take advantage of the green transition of the continent.
Europe, however, is dedicated to capturing this possibility. “Over the past two years, competitiveness is gradually, but with an increasing condemnation, they become a keyword on the European Agenda Policy, together with the defense,” Rosan says. “International cooperation was also invented with the aim of strategic autonomy and placed in the service of the UNION global projection, in time, with the mass reorganization of trade balances due to America-China’s challenges, Europe must quickly diversify their chains and trade.”
The EU was not alone in feeling the need to respond to the Chinese belt and the initiative on the road. Before the second term of President Donald Trump, the United States has also felt compelled to act. 2021. The Administration of President Joe Biden announced an international infrastructure program, installing a better world, which is expanded to G7 next year and renamed the Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI). Among the main areas of the focus of PGIs were energy and Africa: Indeed, the two solar power plants in Angola, the Winds and Storage of the Wind in Kenya and Nickel Processing in Tanzania appeared on the list of early American projects.
But perhaps the most important infrastructure project that west in Africa is the Lobbit Corridor, the railway line that will connect copper deposits of Zambia and the Lobito Atlantic Port in Angola. Copper is the metal of electrification; Lithium, key ingredient in batteries – both necessary raw materials for green transition, and China is currently dominated by both.
The African continent, then is, and then, now the Major between superpowers, above all, in their resources. But with a young and growing population in the subsharse region, the population will grow estimated 79 percent in the next three decades – and the energy system that dominates fossil fuels, African decarbonization will be crucial to the success of net zero. “Today, the elections of Africa do,” Von Der Leyen said during the September announcement, “they shape the future of the whole world.”
This story originally appeared Wired Italia And it was translated from Italian.
