In June 2023, Senegal signed with international partners one of the world's first just energy transition partnerships. President Macky Sall, who was then leading the country, grounds his candidacy for UN Secretary-General in that concrete experience of the energy transition.
The terms of the 2023 agreement. The partnership mobilised 2.5 billion euros of financing and set a course: raising to 40% the share of renewables in the country's electricity mix by 2030. The transition there has a timetable and the means to match it, which anyone can check.
Energy access alongside decarbonisation. A country that still counts households without electricity cannot decarbonise by slowing its development. The justice of the transition rests on that requirement: financing access to energy in the same movement that decarbonises it. Senegal defended that line in the forums where climate finance is negotiated.
A precedent useful to the Organization. Other countries can take up what Senegal negotiated. Without signing these agreements, the Secretary-General can spread the method: measurable targets, committed financing, public follow-up. By making known the agreements that keep their promises, the United Nations would gain credibility.
Twelve years in office, the 2023 agreement among them. These commitments on energy rest on twelve years as head of state, including the signing of this partnership, and on the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022. The vision statement filed with the United Nations bears the mark of that experience: it conceives peace and security together with development and frames its proposals as obligations.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
Senegal's just energy transition partnership agreement, signed in June 2023, is public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net