By Gillian Schutte
The global climate transition is packaged as a universal moral imperative, underpinned by equity and shared responsibility. Yet the mechanisms through which this transition is being imposed on African nations tell a different story—one of external control, geopolitical containment, and donor-led restructuring. South Africa’s experience as the first recipient of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) illustrates how climate finance has become a new frontier in the subordination of postcolonial states. Far from representing a new era of cooperation, the JETP reveals a familiar pattern: conditional aid framed as partnership and debt-driven restructuring sold as sustainability.
The Daily Maverick recently published a defence of South Africa’s transition in the wake of the United States’ withdrawal from the JETP under Donald Trump’s administration. The article, titled “After US Pulls Funding, Experts Agree SA’s Just Transition Faces Shortfalls – Not Collapse” (13 March 2025), minimises the significance of the $1 billion funding cut, arguing that European donors remain engaged and that the country’s decarbonisation efforts would continue unimpeded. This technocratic framing, however, obscures the structural dependency embedded in the JETP. It mistakes the continuity of donor sentiment for sovereignty and treats the loss of critical funding as a logistical hurdle rather than a crisis of autonomy.
South African economist Dr Bradley Bordiss rejects this optimistic interpretation outright. “South Africa was the first Global South country to be targeted by the Western-funded International Partners Group for renewable energy projects, immediately after the United Nations climate talks in Glasgow in November 2021,” he observes. “Why South Africa, and why in 2021? Could it be because the West is desperate to stop South Africa acquiring cheap, reliable, and plentiful nuclear energy from Russian nuclear power stations, given how close we came to a deal under the Zuma administration?” (Jacobin, 5 May 2024). For Bordiss, the Western opposition to that Russian nuclear deal must be read not as environmental caution but as a calculated intervention aimed at stalling BRICS-aligned development and preserving Atlanticist control over African energy trajectories.
That analysis is difficult to ignore. The 2014 Russian offer, brokered under President Jacob Zuma, proposed eight nuclear power stations generating 9,600 MW, with favourable sovereign guarantees, localisation, and technology transfer. Compared to France’s Areva EPR reactors—which have experienced massive cost overruns in projects like Flamanville 3—Rosatom’s proposal was both cheaper and more aligned with national development goals. The Western reaction, including aggressive diplomatic pressure and funding threats, effectively sabotaged the deal. In the vacuum left by this geopolitical rupture, the JETP was born.
The JETP, announced at COP26 in Glasgow, was presented as a historic breakthrough in climate finance. Valued at $8.5 billion, it promised to help South Africa decarbonise while creating jobs and ensuring energy access. Yet 80% of this funding is composed of commercial loans, not grants. As Sean Sweeney notes in Jacobin, these loans come with conditions that include unbundling Eskom, liberalising the energy market, and fast-tracking coal decommissioning—often without viable baseload alternatives in place. What is presented as green development is, in essence, a form of structural adjustment—market-centric, externally dictated, and driven by the priorities of donor governments and their private sectors.
The political influence of this arrangement was immediate. The JETP was not debated in Parliament, nor subjected to meaningful public scrutiny. It was designed and launched in consultation with Western financiers, technocrats, and energy consultants. The closure of Komati Power Station in 2022, financed by a $497 million World Bank loan, is cited as an early success of the transition. But in practice, it resulted in job losses, reduced generation capacity, and further destabilisation of the national grid. By 2023, Camden, Grootvlei, and Hendrina power stations were also marked for closure—even as load-shedding reached record levels and public outrage mounted.
Eskom, already burdened by years of mismanagement, alleged corruption, and sabotage, became the scapegoat and the casualty. Instead of being recapacitated, it is being hollowed out. Private Independent Power Producers (IPPs) now receive over R93 million per day, while Eskom’s own generation fleet deteriorates. In the 2023–2024 financial year, Eskom posted a net loss of R25.5 billion, despite a R250 billion bailout. Its gross debt stands at R412 billion. These are not transitional hiccups—they are indicators of a systemic restructuring of South Africa’s public energy landscape, orchestrated under the banner of climate justice but engineered through mechanisms of neoliberal extraction.
The Daily Maverick’s claim that South Africa’s transition remains intact despite the Trump-era withdrawal not only downplays the central role of the US in orchestrating JETP—it also deflects attention from the fundamental problem: South Africa does not control its energy transition. The funding loss is not trivial. It reveals the vulnerability of a project whose continuity hinges on the electoral fortunes of foreign leaders. That European partners “remain committed,” as the article insists, is hardly reassuring. Their own climate finance is now being diverted toward military rearmament and security priorities in the wake of shifting global tensions. As Bloomberg reported in March 2025, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands—all members of the extended IPG—have slashed development and climate aid to fund national defence.
If the goal is real energy transformation—not just decarbonisation, but developmental equity—then the South must turn toward different models. Burkina Faso under Captain Ibrahim Traoré offers one such path. Unlike South Africa, Burkina Faso has resisted the JETP and other donor-led models, instead forging bilateral partnerships with China and Russia. In 2023, it signed an agreement with Rosatom to explore nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Simultaneously, it expanded solar and battery storage through partnerships with Chinese institutions, grounded in infrastructure development, technology transfer, and national ownership.
This is not a romanticisation of alternatives but a recognition that sovereignty matters. Burkina Faso, in reviving the developmental legacy of Thomas Sankara, is asserting its right to design a pathway that elevates people over markets, and public control over foreign leverage. South Africa, by contrast, is being asked to dismantle Eskom while Europe restarts its coal plants. It is being asked to decommission its grid while donors restructure its markets. It is being asked to absorb the language of justice while surrendering the substance of autonomy.
The lesson is clear. No climate transition built on donor funding, commercial loans, and external conditionalities can be considered just. A just transition must begin with sovereignty—over planning, resources, and infrastructure. It must empower, not outsource. It must heal, not fragment. South Africa does not need to beg for climate finance. It needs to reclaim the right to decide what kind of future it wants—and who gets to build it.
As Dr Bradley Bordiss rightly warns, “when transition begins with dependency, it cannot end in sovereignty.” If the first move in South Africa’s green economy was to replace a BRICS-aligned nuclear vision with a transatlantic debt instrument, then the foundations were never developmental—they were geopolitical.
It is time to build something else.
* Gillian Schutte is a South African writer, filmmaker, and social justice activist. Her work interrogates systems of power, capitalism, patriarchy, and whiteness, and is rooted in the defence of the commons, decolonial justice, and the dignity of all life.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.