My family and I are planning an off-road development tour (#chimneysforAfrica) of the east coast of Africa. Start date: 2024, end date: TBD. Reawakening to the world beyond our shores has been — and I recognise the irony here — an uncomfortable process of introspection. I just don’t want to be bothered.  I spent several years in East Africa as a younger person and loved it, so my first thought is that age and stage of life probably answer for a great deal of this malaise. As comedian Michael McIntyre will attest, getting out the door with toddlers is hard enough. Will going doorless streamline things? I’ll let you know. 

But as we have started preparing for life on the road, I’m beginning to think that the problem may be broader. We have been unable to find an updated roadmap for the continent of Africa that is newer than 2019, and I don’t think this is a coincidence. My growing impression is that the West has lost focus on Africa, or at the very least, is drastically out of touch with the nations and people comprising it.  

We have faced significant pushback to our project, which is designed to be consonant with current cultural cooking practices. We have been repeatedly told that soon, the entire population of continental Africa will have access to reliable energy, even though energy security has decreased in several countries. Denouncing traditional cooking practices in a region that produces just 4% of global emissions and is being exploited for resources for Western “greening” is an unfathomable piece of hypocrisy.  

And this is the other dynamic that concerns us. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone produces 70% of the world’s cobalt.  This is a product essential for lithium-ion batteries. Yet, at a time when New Zealand is deeply concerned with green energy, aid policy has become much more insular. Since 2019, the New Zealand Aid Programme has had “a particular focus on the Pacific Islands region”, meaning that less than 3 per cent of aid is directed towards African partners. 

At the same time, Russia and China now have strategic interests in nations on the African continent. Chinese companies own or run several key infrastructure holdings, including major road networks, mines and ports. And, with the departure of French forces from West African nations, the Russian mercenary group “Expeditionary Corps” (previously known as “Wagner”) is rebranding as “a regime survival package”. It’s offering governments militarily enforced stability in exchange for access to natural resources. 

Africa is strategically significant and will continue to grow in significance over the coming decades. The influence of less democratic states in the region leads to greater instability and human rights abuses, threatening global supplies of crucial minerals. Humanitarian incentives aside, we and Western democracies, more broadly, cannot afford to opt out of a relationship with African nations.  

It’s time to get off the couch.