High costs have put off most investors from buying into the continent’s plentiful clean-energy reserves
3 min
Energy investment in Africa needs to more than double by the end of the decade if the continent is to meet its energy and climate goals. However, high costs are putting off much-needed investment in the region’s plentiful clean-energy resources and huge reserves of critical minerals, the International Energy Agency said.
“African countries have huge energy potential, including a spectacular range and quality of renewable-energy resources,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the Paris-based agency in a report published jointly with the African Development Bank on Wednesday. “But these riches are largely untapped and they will remain so without greatly improved access to capital.”
Africa is home to more than half of the world’s best solar resources as well as possessing great potential for hydroelectric and wind-power projects, according to the IEA. It is also uniquely placed to contribute to industries behind the transition away from fossil fuels. It accounts for 80% of the world’s platinum reserves, half of all cobalt reserves, and 40% of manganese reserves, all of which are expected to be crucial to technologies such as autocatalysts and electric batteries, the agency said.
The report’s figures also pose a challenge for the West and the U.S. in particular, which is seeking to secure diverse sources of critical materials. In recent years, the West has lost clout in Africa as China has become the continent’s largest trading partner and fourth largest investor. Much of China’s investment in Africa goes toward energy projects and the nation’s lead in renewable technologies will likely see it grow as a funder of African renewable energy projects, the IEA said.
“Energy investment on our continent has fallen short,” wrote William Ruto, president of Kenya, in the report’s foreword. “It is imperative we take bold steps to more than double energy investment here in the next decade, with a primary focus on clean energy.”
From around $90 billion today, annual spending on Africa’s energy needs must more than double to $200 billion by 2030, two-thirds of which will need to go toward clean energy projects, the report said.
Despite the investment goal—which the IEA says will allow African nations to meet their agreed climate targets as laid out in the Paris Agreement and achieve universal access to modern energy systems—energy spending in Africa has been falling over the past five years as investment in fossil fuels has declined and spending on renewable energy projects has flatlined. The continent makes up just 3% of global energy spending.
The indebtedness of many African nations is holding back public spending on energy projects while private investors are reluctant to invest because of a prevalence of fragile states, absent regulations and perceptions of political or reputational risks.
All of these are pushing up the cost of capital which makes many African energy projects financially unviable despite ample local resources and proven technologies such as wind or solar power, the report said.
The cost of capital for a large-scale renewable energy project in Africa is up to three times higher than in advanced economies and China, the IEA said. For smaller projects, which will be crucial in rural areas, the costs are even higher.
Concessional financing—in which lenders such as international development banks offer developing nations more generous terms such as lower interest rates or longer repayment periods—will be crucial to overcoming those obstacles, the IEA said.
The IEA estimates that only half of electricity grid projects in Africa are commercially viable without such assistance, while most clean cooking projects would be unaffordable.
Despite accounting for 20% of the global population, investment in African energy projects is far too small, leaving much of the continent lacking basic access to electricity or clean cooking fuels, the IEA said.
Currently, 600 million people across Africa lack access to electricity and almost one billion have no access to clean cooking fuels.
$25 billion a year alone would be enough to provide basic access to electricity and clean cooking fuels to all Africans, equivalent to the cost of installing one LNG terminal, something European nations have done in record time following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The report came as African leaders met in Nairobi for the third and final day of the Africa Climate Summit, which has seen calls for debt relief for African nations facing the effects of climate change and hundreds of millions of dollars pledged to Africa’s nascent carbon credits initiative.
African nations are seeking redress for the effects of climate change they experience despite contributing little to carbon emissions, the main driver of global warming. The continent accounts for around 2% to 3% of global carbon emissions but is particularly exposed to extreme weather.
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As AI productivity trackers reshape workplace evaluations, employees are learning how to manage calendars, activity levels and AI usage to ensure their contributions are recognized.
4 min
What’s more important than being a good employee right now? Looking like a good employee in the eyes of AI productivity trackers that more managers are using to evaluate their teams.
Employee-monitoring systems are especially popular at tech companies and are also used by other white-collar firms that want to probe how people spend company time. The scary thing: You might not even know you’re being watched because many states don’t require disclosure.
Metrics can include performance data that is undoubtedly relevant, such as sales results. But it also can employ dubious proxies like keyboard strokes and how often your computer screen goes into sleep mode.
We generally accepted, or at least understood, heightened surveillance during the work-from-home era. Back then it seemed reasonable for bosses to keep tabs on employees they couldn’t see.
Yet the oversight has only escalated, and tensions are rising, too.
A group of former Meta Platforms employees alleges in a lawsuit that the company used a “constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” when it began laying off about 10% of its workforce in May. Meta says humans make termination calls.
However that case shakes out, a couple of things are clear. Companies eager to gauge which employees are locked in now have sophisticated AI monitoring systems at their disposal. And they believe they have leverage in a tepid labor market.
So while we may chafe at having our worth reduced to numbers on the boss’s productivity dashboard, we have to play the game as it’s being played. Here are some tips, based on conversations with people who make employee monitoring systems—and others who game the systems.
Calendar integration is one way that productivity trackers have gotten more advanced and, ostensibly, fairer.
Let’s say you make an old-fashioned phone call or attend an in-person meeting. Your Outlook or Slack status may switch to “away,” making you appear as inactive as if you were taking an extended coffee break.
Employee monitors like one made by a company called Insightful cross-check your online status with your calendar to see whether there is a valid reason for your apparent inactivity. If that call or meeting is on your schedule, then the system will recognize that you are busy offline. If nothing is on the books, it could look like you’re slacking off.
Let’s not go any further without addressing the underlying question: How much downtime is permissible during the workday? After all, people have been scared to let managers see anything non-work-related on their screens since personal computers first arrived in offices.
No one knows this better than Roger Wagner, who is widely credited with creating the first “boss button” in the early 1980s. He designed a keyboard shortcut to instantly display a spreadsheet if the boss walked by your cubicle while you were playing a computer game. Boss buttons have been features of countless diversions since. (I confess to using one built into a March Madness streaming app.)
Wagner, the founder of computer-education company 1010 Technologies, says his original design was a joke—more of a commentary on overbearing managers than a cover for lazy employees. Good bosses understand workers need mental breaks throughout the day, he says.
This matches what I heard from Insightful Chief Executive Ivan Petrovic. He says customers that use his company’s workforce-management platform don’t expect employees to stay on task 100% of the time.
“On average companies are aiming for 60% to 80% of your time being utilized for work during the day,” he says.
Go ahead and exhale. It’s probably OK to watch an occasional YouTube video at your desk.
And if you’re going to artificially inflate your activity level, be careful. Hitting 90% could look suspicious.
So don’t leave your mouse jiggler on all day. Choose the right one if you must resort to shenanigans.
There are lots of software applications that mimic the movements of a computer mouse, so you can appear to be working while away from your desk. There are also devices that plug into computer ports and do the same thing.
Corporate cybersecurity systems increasingly block these apps and devices, and productivity trackers claim to be able to detect them. But some workers swear by mouse docks, like one made by Tech8 USA, that keep cursors moving. The company originally made mouse-moving software but now focuses on physical jigglers.
“People are drawn to mechanical solutions because they’re so simple and don’t require software,” says Tech8 Marketing Director Sam Matthews. “As monitoring technology becomes more sophisticated, that distinction has become even more relevant.”
Another popular metric for employee-monitoring systems is AI usage. Companies want to know who is embracing new tools, and it can be tempting to think more is better.
“There’s a performative aspect where employees overblow their usage of AI so that they appear relevant in the organization,” says Andrea Derler, principal researcher at Visier, which helps companies track and analyze employee work habits.
In a recent Visier survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, 48% admitted to exaggerating their AI usage.
This is already an outdated strategy. Using AI for everything used to score points for experimentation. Now it can seem wasteful because many companies are watching AI token spending more carefully.
Look, productivity theater has always been part of work. Most of us aren’t trying to cheat the system, but expectations are changing so quickly that we need to be savvy about what the latest employee trackers are looking for.
Sometimes it takes a little gamesmanship to get full credit for our contributions.
