As South Africa’s economic crisis worsens and unemployment rises, the state power utility, Eskom, is only hurting the economy even more with load shedding (power cuts). A Green New Deal that prioritises renewable energy could both generate massive employment - and solve load shedding for good. And it turns out the sustainability, climate change and environmental benefits are just the cherry on the cake!

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Politically Aweh contributor Aman Baboolal unpacks why 2020 might be the perfect time for South Africa to consider implementing a wide ranging Green New Deal, drawing inspiration from the plan put together by progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States, and reminding us of the historical similarities between the socio-economic conditions that spurred Franklin D Roosevelt to implement the original New Deal in 1930s USA, and those of 2020 South Africa.

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To find out more, we spoke to local experts Jesse Burton, energy policy researcher at the University of Cape Town's Energy Systems Research Group, and Megan Davies, a scholar of the just energy transition in South Africa, based at the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University. To get some perspective from renewable energy developments in the rest of Africa, we chatted to Anja Berretta, the head of the Energy Security and Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa programme at Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

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