The governance of energy transitions in Africa: a sketch of plural perspectives
Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Energy, Sustainability and Society
Abstract
Building on the contributions to the article collection “The Governance of Sustainable Energy Transitions in the Global
South “, this editorial offers a sketch for a research agenda on transitions research with a main focus on Africa. Still
being ill-defined in its concrete contours, this research agenda engages with the central themes of heterogeneity,
politics, and the material basis of energy transitions. In this editorial, we address both procedural and content-related
questions. Regarding procedural questions, we inform about the context in which this collection emerged. On
that, a workshop held in Accra in September 2019 was a key milestone. We contextualize the challenges that some
workshop participants had with developing their contributions into publishable articles in the context of uneven
academic support structures and knowledge hegemonies. Finally, we introduce the contributions to our article
collection, emphasising how they connect and contribute to our draft research agenda. With regard to the content
dimension, this article collection builds and proclaims the need for plural approaches to understanding energy
transitions in Africa. A plurality of specific context conditions calls for pluralistic analytical perspectives. Not taking for
granted hegemonic, western ways of understanding energy systems and explaining change, we rather depart from
engagements with the diversity of changes that aggregate into transition pathways—a diversity that in the context of
Africa is impossible to overlook. To implement such a pluralistic research agenda, scholars need more opportunities to
network, exchange and publish.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Transition, Energy, Perceptive, Hegemonic, Governance