Is the rest of the world slowing down Africa’s ambitions to decarbonize the transportation sector?

Background:

The transportation sector, globally, is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. As of 2022, Statista reports that the sector produces more than seven billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. The report cited cars and vans as the biggest source of transportation emissions that year, accounting for approximately 48 percent of global transportation emissions. In this article, I focus my attention on cars, vans and buses etc. and analyze the potential impact these are having on the African continent.

Diving into the current realities on the Continent:

The International Council on Clean Transportation reports that on average, about 1.5 million used vehicles are imported into Africa every year with the EU, USA and Japan being the major source. What is concerning is that most of these vehicles are over 15 years old and offer little to no environmental protection. The UNRSF – UN Road Safety Fund further shows that the African vehicle fleet is set to grow four to five times by 2050 and 80-90% of this growth will come from import of used vehicles.

Now, if we take these figures at face value and against the assumption that each vehicle produces about 4.6 metric tonnes (as per study from the United States Environmental Protection Agency) of carbon per year, annually, Africa adds 6.9 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide to its carbon footprint annually!

Is the rest of the world helping us reduce this footprint?

A few years ago, the UN Road Safety Fund started an initiative of developing standards to address the quality of cars getting on African roads. In this initiative, they brought together EU member states, Japan, the US and African importing countries, to agree on minimum standards/requirements for used vehicles. This framework also suggested that to reduce emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases by up to 90%, all vehicles to be imported, both new and used, and petrol and diesel, will need to comply with a minimum of EURO 4/IV vehicle emissions standard from 1 January 2021. Further, all light duty vehicles imported had to have an age limit of 5 years with a 10-year implementation period. On the back of this, many African countries have also enacted laws that place higher import duties on old vehicles to discourage imports. While these provisions are a step in the right direction, it has not been as effective in reducing the number of used vehicles on Africa roads.

Path forward…..

Eliminating used vehicles off Africa roads is not as easy, it should be a balancing act. Many African countries have not yet reached a stage of adopting clean energy vehicles, neither do they have the infrastructure to adopt such vehicles. However, I want to state here that decarbonizing the transportation sector in Africa should not be done in reverse, we should manage the situation from its source. Rather than waiting for the ‘’nuisance’’ to be on African roads, we should ensure such cars don’t even make it on the Vessel to Africa in the first place. The EU, USA and Japan can assist in constantly enacting laws that limit such exports.

If we cut supply, we manage demand and ultimately, we clean up African roads!