Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) is important for Africa, Angola’s Minister of Energy and Water says on ADSW Talks

Bringing politicians, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and financiers together at ADSW is important if we are to tackle climate change, says Angola’s Minister of Energy and Water, Mr Hon Joao Baptista Borges.

“We have to congratulate the authorities of UAE on hosting sustainability week, which will undoubtedly become important to everyone,” he told ADSW Talks.

Countries like Angola, “need to come [to ADSW] not only to seek solutions but also to come and get funding, to get assistance so that we can undertake measures, actions and projects that aim to ensure that living conditions for future generations are as good as those we currently have”, he added.

The effects of climate change are particularly stark for Africa even though the continent generates a smaller carbon footprint compared to the rest of the developed world.

Countries like Angola in the southern region of Africa are already experiencing the effects of climate change with people forced to migrate from one region to another.

“Some die from these forced displacements and my wish is undoubtedly, to live in a country where, regardless of where we live, we have the conditions to ensure our survival,” said Mr Borges.

“Angolans want to live in a country where we have the possibility of preserving the climate as it is today or as it was a few years ago. We cannot let our world become uninhabitable for future generations, for our children and grandchildren.”

Mr Borges said his responsibility, as the person in charge of the electrical industry in Angola, was to work to allow all technological solutions and all investments that are adopted by the country to be low emission solutions.

In a recent speech to the UAE Climate Tech forum, HE Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, Chairman of Masdar, and COP28 President-Designate, stressed that the global south should not be left behind in clean tech investment.

He pointed out that developing economies received only 20 per cent of clean tech investments in 2022, despite representing 70 percent of the world’s population.

“Technology is essential to helping the most vulnerable communities build capacities and leapfrog into a low carbon economic development model,” he said. “But to maximize technology adoption in these countries, we need public, multilateral and private sectors to supercharge climate finance, making it much more available, more accessible and more affordable.”