What does a sustainable future look like? Which roads take you there and are they socially desirable? These were the questions investigated in the EPIC Africa project. The VITO Nexus team, which specialises in systemic transitions, is involved, together with the SESAM team at VITO/EnergyVille, which is tasked with modelling.
2063 is to Africa what 2050 is to Europe. By then, the African continent aims to have taken big steps towards a more sustainable economy and society, (the so-called Agenda 2063 of the African Union). And like Europe, the focus in the African sustainability transition also lies on energy, water and food. What does the transition look like, taking account of the present and future needs as defined by local stakeholders themselves? This exercise is being done within the EPIC Africa project for two large areas in Sub-Saharan Africa: the Volta Basin in the west (stretching mainly across Ghana and Burkina Faso) and the Tana Basin in the east (in Kenya).
In EPIC Africa, financed from the Horizon Europe programme, experts from VITO/EnergyVille are helping to explore the potential transition paths for the Tana and Volta Basins. They are doing this with their knowledge and experience in transition management. “We are applying a framework for transition management that facilitates reflexive and adaptive control of systemic innovation processes,” says Erik Laes from VITO Nexus, the team that uses systemic transition to investigate and apply sustainability. “We work with so-called transition spaces, in which collaboration is stimulated at multiple levels and with multiple stakeholders.”
Working transversally
The project began in the autumn of 2022 and will run until the end of 2026. In each of the two regions, three workshops will be held in which the transition to a sustainable energy, water and food supply will be investigated and charted. Laes: “In the transition workshops, we team up with local stakeholders and focus attention on the long term, whereby we work transversally across the borders of the various relevant fields and take account of the principles, values and wishes of local people.” In early 2024, the first workshop took place in Kenya's capital Nairobi, during which the focus lay mainly on guaranteeing a socially fair, reliable and sustainable energy, water and food supply for the Kenyan people. In March 2024, the first workshop is scheduled in Accra, as capital of Ghana.
During the workshop in Nairobi, local stakeholders came into contact with transition thinking for the first time. “It was a new experience for all parties," says Laes. “Primarily for us, as Nexus team, because it is only the first time we organised a transition exercise outside Europe. “But our African partners too were invited to think out of the familiar box, and to seek the connection between the added value of the water, food and energy system for society in the long term. It was wonderful to see how our African partners quickly realised the relevance and surprised us with creative solutions.”
During the first workshops, the vision towards a sustainable future was generally explored and shaped. Later workshops will focus on seeing which possible paths may lead there, and which policy actions are therefore required.
To support the process, the experts from VITO/EnergyVille – in particular those from the SESAM team – use models in which they translate the implication of visions, for example, to determine conditions or potential (e.g. the possible capacity of renewable energy). In doing so, they use the CLEWS framework (which stands for climate, land use, energy, water and social dimensions) to analyse the interaction and synergies between the water, energy and food system. “Thanks to the CLEWS approach, we can identify the driving forces and limitations of sustainable development in an integral and participative manner and consider the three systems from different perspectives,” says Laes.
As for the modelling, the tools include the open source model OSeMOSYS. Being an open source, other project partners, such as African universities, can also use it for educational purposes.
