Only One-Third of National Climate Pledges Include Fossil-Fuel Phase-Out, Where Does Africa Stand?

It is one of those statistics that seems too small for the size of the problem.
Only about one in three of the world’s updated national climate pledges mentions the words “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels.

That finding, published by Carbon Brief in its latest analysis of updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), is both unsurprising and unsettling. Out of sixty-three new climate plans submitted to the United Nations this year, only twenty-three contain any reference to reducing or eliminating fossil-fuel production. The rest either stay silent, or quietly plan to expand it.

The global picture is sobering enough. For Africa, it is existential.

A Continent Still Caught Between Extraction and Transition

Across the continent, climate pledges reflect ambition on paper and contradiction in practice. Many African countries speak the language of transition, yet few have written the hard sentences that deal directly with fossil fuels.

Some, like Kenya and Morocco, emphasise renewable energy expansion. Others, such as Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, and Senegal, continue to bet heavily on oil and gas as development drivers. Between the rhetoric of transition and the reality of dependence lies Africa’s deepest dilemma: how to industrialise and expand energy access without reinforcing the very fossil economy the world is trying to leave behind.

Nigeria’s case is emblematic. Its Energy Transition Plan projects net-zero by 2060, but its short- and medium-term targets still rely on expanding gas infrastructure. New refineries are being built, new pipelines financed, and new marginal fields licensed, all in the name of energy security. Meanwhile, renewable investments remain fragmented, underfunded, and policy-thin.

In essence, Africa’s biggest energy economy is preparing for a clean future while doubling down on fossil fuels to pay for it.

This contradiction is not unique to Nigeria. It reflects a structural problem that runs across the continent: a transition discourse dominated by aspiration but constrained by economics, politics, and dependency.

The Logic of Delay

When asked why fossil fuels remain central to their development plans, African policymakers often give a familiar set of answers. They are not wrong, but they are incomplete.

First, energy poverty. Nearly 600 million Africans still lack electricity, and hundreds of millions rely on biomass for cooking. Under such conditions, fossil fuels appear less like a problem than a lifeline.

Second, fiscal dependence. Oil and gas still account for more than half of export earnings in several African economies, providing the budget revenues that pay for schools, hospitals, and wages.

Third, industrial readiness. The infrastructure, skills, and finance required to pivot toward large-scale renewable industrialisation remain scarce. So governments lean on what already exists, the fossil value chain, hoping to use it as a bridge to cleaner horizons.

The problem is that every bridge built from fossil fuel revenues risks becoming a road that leads back to the same place.

This is the “logic of delay”: a narrative that postpones structural change by claiming to enable it.

The Missing Third of the Transition

If only one-third of global NDCs explicitly commit to a fossil-fuel phase-out, it means two-thirds are either hedging or avoiding the question. The silence is politically convenient but economically dangerous.

For Africa, the omission carries at least four major implications.

First, it threatens long-term competitiveness. The global economy is moving toward carbon efficiency. Countries that continue to anchor growth on fossil infrastructure will face shrinking export markets and tightening financial conditions. Already, climate-aligned lenders are scrutinising portfolios for “transition risk.”

Second, it weakens investor confidence. Unclear signals about phase-out trajectories make it difficult to price risk and design long-term projects. Investors need certainty. The absence of fossil-transition language in NDCs tells them there is none.

Third, it erodes climate justice. Africa contributes less than four percent of global emissions, yet faces the harshest climate impacts. A fair transition should include the right to energy access, but also the responsibility to prevent new carbon lock-in. Without explicit phase-out plans, the justice narrative collapses into a plea for perpetual exception.

Fourth, it perpetuates the extractive model. By not setting boundaries on fossil expansion, governments reinforce a system in which Africa remains a supplier of raw hydrocarbons to external markets while importing the technologies of the future.

The missing third of climate pledges is not just about wording. It is about direction, and Africa, more than any other region, cannot afford to move without one.

Between Promise and Performance

To understand why this matters, consider the geography of global energy investment.
While Africa debates transition frameworks, new oil and gas fields are being licensed across the continent, from Senegal’s offshore basins to Uganda’s Albertine Graben and Namibia’s desert frontiers. International oil companies, under pressure at home, are finding friendlier prospects in Africa’s regulatory landscapes.

The result is a paradox: as global capital shifts toward decarbonisation, a parallel wave of investment is reinforcing Africa’s fossil infrastructure.

This pattern exposes a deeper governance issue. Most African energy plans treat fossil fuels and renewables as parallel systems rather than sequential ones. There is little integration between fossil-phase-out targets and clean-energy scale-up strategies.

The question, therefore, is not whether Africa should exploit its resources; it is whether it can do so without mortgaging its future.

What Leadership Should Look Like

If Africa’s climate pledges are to mean anything, they must confront the fossil question directly. Pretending that energy transition can happen without phasing out fossil fuels is like promising a clean diet while opening more fast-food chains.

Three shifts are critical.

1. Integrate phase-out into national energy planning

Every African NDC should include time-bound language on fossil-fuel decline, production limits, subsidy removal schedules, and diversification targets. Not as an external imposition, but as a development imperative that aligns with industrial modernisation.

2. Align finance with transition outcomes

Development banks, sovereign wealth funds, and African pension funds must be mobilised to co-finance renewable industries. The next generation of African infrastructure, whether in power, transport, or manufacturing, must be built for a low-carbon world, not retrofitted later at high cost.

3. Redefine the just transition around ownership

Justice is not only about protecting the poor from climate shocks. It is about ensuring that Africans own the industries of the new energy age, solar, storage, green hydrogen, and critical minerals processing. The transition cannot be just if it is not locally controlled.

The Political Courage to Say “No”

It takes political courage to say no to a resource that has built your economy.
But true leadership is about choosing the future over the familiar.

At COP28, African negotiators argued for fairness, rightly so. But fairness also demands internal accountability. It means acknowledging that Africa cannot demand global climate justice while expanding the very systems that cause the crisis.

The conversation must move beyond aid or moral pleading. Africa’s leverage lies not in sympathy but in strategy, in showing that a just, inclusive, and self-determined transition is possible even within structural constraints.

This requires clarity of intent. A national plan that expands refineries, subsidises fossil fuel consumption, and calls itself an “energy transition strategy” is not credible. It is an industrial survival plan with a green ribbon.

Toward a More Honest Transition

The data from Carbon Brief should serve as a mirror. One-third of global pledges mention fossil-fuel phase-out; two-thirds do not. The same ratio could describe Africa’s moral alignment with the climate transition, one part genuine effort, two parts hesitation.

Yet hesitation is costly. Every new oil field, every gas pipeline, every refinery expansion deepens the transition gap that future generations must pay to close.

Africa must choose whether to lead the transition or to follow it on other people’s terms.

Leading means crafting policies that connect industrialisation with decarbonisation, finance with justice, and sovereignty with sustainability. It means understanding that fossil fuels are not the foundation of African power; they are the ceiling of it.

When the rest of the world stops buying what we sell, the only economy left will be the one we build for ourselves.

The Road Ahead

Africa’s climate pledges need to stop dancing around the central question. Fossil fuels made our economies visible; they cannot make them sustainable. The future will not be negotiated in oil barrels but in megawatts, mineral value chains, and the governance structures that determine who benefits.

If only a third of global climate plans dare to confront fossil-fuel phase-out, then Africa should be among the few that do. Not because it is easy, but because it is necessary.

Industrialisation that ignores the climate will be short-lived. Climate ambition that ignores industrialisation will be unjust. Africa’s path must do both: power development and power down dependency.

The world is watching for signs of sincerity. Africa must now show that its transition is not a rhetorical bridge, but a real departure.

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