Sustainable Energy Transition in Russia and Ghana Within a Multi-Level Perspective

Received 5 April 2023. Accepted 30 August 2023. Published online 6 October 2023.This paper is a case study based on a critical review of existing literature and primary data through interviews to investigate energy transition framing and manifestation in the Global South. It provides critical insights into sustainable energy transition in Ghana and Russia within a multi-level perspective (MLP). We argue that whereas Ghana’s energy transition concepts and policies are mirrored by landscape, regime, and niche, practical transitioning has been slow due to inadequate resources and incentives, limited historical culpability in global greenhouse gas, and the country being locked-in to existing hydrocarbon socio-technical systems. The MLP approach is useful in describing energy technologies, markets, and consumption practices. But in Russia, social policy at distinct levels is united by centralised energy law and technical systems, as well as institutional rules and differences based on costs in economic regions. This paper contributes to the energy transitioning discourse within the Global South using Russia and Ghana as cases to highlight how transition policies and practices differ from country to country, driven by economic, political, social, cultural, and historical elements with global frameworks serving as guides. Rigid application of landscape, regime, and niche concepts is challenged in describing and analysing the context-specific nuances in sustainable energy transition policy across spaces. There is a fundamental challenge of mechanically fusing a one-fits-all approach to sustainable energy transitioning in developing countries and societies due to differences in historical contributions to climatic issues and inequality of access to resources and technologies. Energy transition processes and practices should be compatible with social justice.The fieldwork and data analysis for the Russian case was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under Grant No. 22-28-00392 “Waste production and disposal in the megalopolises of Russia: multisectoral and interdisciplinary analysis”. The Ghana section wish to acknowledge the funding support for the literature review and writing from the University of Ghana, through the Institute of African Studies (IAS) annual research support fund for research fellows at IAS

Mining in Africa after the supercycle:New directions and geographies

Mining in Africa is at a pivotal moment. For most of the period 2000 to 2012, the extractive industries were in a ‘supercycle’ of sustained high commodity prices. Driven by resource-intensive growth in emerging market economies, prices were anticipated to continue for decades to come. However, this ‘supercycle’ ended in 2012 and there followed a severe slump in mineral prices from 2014 onwards. On the one hand, a new era of commodity market dynamics has begun, with changing patterns of economic activity, minerals governance, and environmental regulation. On the other hand, the end of the supercycle has continued or intensified pre-existing trends towards mechanisation, automation, and enclavity while distributive pressures on companies by local communities and host nations increases. We argue that the end of the supercycle has reconfigured the geographies of extraction in ways that are not yet reflected in existing research nor taken into consideration in policy implementation, particularly around corporate strategy, state- business relations and models for mineral-based development strategies. In this paper we map the terrain of research on the supercycle in Africa and identify emerging post-supercycle trends - some of which have overtaken research. The paper is structured around examining four themes: (1) new geographies of investment and extraction, (2) new geographies of struggle, (3) national minerals-based development and (4) labour and livelihoods, for which we identify key trends during the supercycle and post-supercycle and areas for future research and policy development