Landry Ninteretse was a journalist for several years before he dumped the profession to join a movement for fighting climate change.
The regional director at 350Africa. org reveals what motivated him to join the climate movement. 350Africa.org is an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
Excerpts: When did you join 350Africa.org? I joined in 2009, so it’s been almost 15 years.
I started actually with the organisation, because it started in 2008-09.
I have been an organiser, a campaigner, communications media person at 350 and now the regional director.
We are trying and doing our best to get affordable, accessible, clean energy to communities, particularly in the Global South.
These are the regions that are currently marginalised when it comes to access to energy and more importantly to clean energy.
That’s where we’re focusing our interventions at the moment.
How do you engage communities?
We are a people-powered movement, so it’s a movement of people.
If you know the scout and the guide movement, it’s more or less, I think, the type of model that I see.
But we are on the climate field, so we work with ordinary citizens.
So, whoever cares about the climate, the environment and the planet can join 350.
We work with local groups, the same way the scouts have small units in neighbourhoods and cities.
So we have also a large network of 500 groups across the world. In Africa we have, I think, 217.
We have a couple of groups in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Burundi and South Africa.
Those are the local groups that come together, supported by us, for training, capacity building, organising and campaigning.
We provide the tools and resources for them to come together, sit, reflect, look at the climate challenges in the areas where they live and what can be done.
We train communities so they can understand why we’re in a climate crisis, what are the causes, what are the alternatives and what can be done.
We provide organising tools for them to start a course of action that can be at county level, district level and even national level.
Sometimes it can even be continental or regional level.
Has there been any impact?
As one of the veterans of the organisation, I have seen the movement grow.
When I joined, there was no local group.
I facilitated the formation of such groups in my home country, Burundi, across East Africa, including Kenya, and throughout the continent.
One of the elements we are proud of, or the impact, was to halt the proliferation of coal.
There was a moment where Kenya was pushing for a coal plant in Lamu.
It was the same in Ghana.
There was a number of proposed coal plants across the continent, again, from the policy makers and other seculars working in Africa.
But we managed to resist the proliferation of coal plants in Kenya, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal.
Working with the communities through empowerment, capacity building, training and advocacy, we’re able to demonstrate that the fossil fuel path, powered by coal or gas or oil, won’t lead us anywhere.
We’re in a cycle where communities continue to suffer from the harmful effects of fossil fuels and don’t see any tangible benefit because even most of those coal projects proposed were not meant to meet the needs of locals.
Some of them are for international export.
Right now, we are working on a campaign. Fossil fuels will compromise our future as Africans.
It is going to be even more disastrous if we continue on that path of fossil fuel exploration.
We have a huge potential when it comes to renewable energy.
What needs to be done to harness this renewable energy?
First of all, I think it’s a matter of political and strategic choice by the leaders or the current leaders.
Again, our thought of this interview, our thought of this document, just transition for Africa and climate, energy and development vision of Africa that was produced last year during the African Climate Summit here in Nairobi.
Basically, the leaders, I think some of them, if not all of them, are aware that all the traditional classic mode of extra activism and exporting raw materials won’t solve the continental issues.
Africa has a very ambitious agenda when it comes to energy access, I think, 2063 agenda.
However, a number of studies have shown that even in the short term, let’s talk about the Sustainable Development Goals-number seven is about access to clean energy.
They have shown that Africa won’t meet that target of providing 100 per cent access to clean energy if we continue kind of tapping or hoping that the grid, the centralised grid or even fossil fuels are tempted to.
The cost of deploying the grid across the continent is extremely expensive.
And it’s also a slow process because the financial donors, traditional partners of development like World Bank, IMF’s kind of deployment is slow in such a way that Africa would miss that target, if we continue to bet on the traditional grid or fossil fuels.
That’s why we say at the moment the centralised renewable energy system, mini-grids that are deployed in districts or counties can help us speed up that process of bringing energy closer to the people.
Bad choices by the government and policymakers can really emphasise the vulnerability and the marginalisation of simple rural communities.
No one is raising their voices to say, hey, this is not okay.
While the Chinese and the French are going to make billions out of the Ugandan oil, those who live in areas where that oil is being pumped out are left in the dark.
And that’s an issue of justice, that’s an issue of equity and accountability.
That kind of situation, scenario is unacceptable at this stage.
That’s why I say the fossil fuels kind of emphasise and continue to perpetrate the very same injustices, exclusion and a complete lack of consideration to the interests of local Africans.
