The News
The US is reportedly stalling the distribution of $2.6 billion in multilateral climate finance to South Africa, the latest sign of fraying ties between the two nations.
Washington had already blocked direct aid after accusing Pretoria — without evidence — of unlawfully expropriating land from white farmers; the White House has since declared South Africa’s ambassador to the US “persona non grata.”
The wider American aid pullback has left a wide gap in Africa’s climate finance needs, which other rich countries will struggle to fill. “We’re entering a world of more constraints,” the head of Britain’s development finance office told Semafor. “You need to do more with less.”
SIGNALS
Aid cuts could exacerbate South Africa’s energy problems
If the World Bank-linked funding is not approved at a later date, it would deal a major blow to South Africa’s plans to close some of the coal-fired plants that still supply more than 80% of the country’s electricity, Bloomberg wrote. The African nation has endured a years-long energy crisis, marked by periods of daily blackouts. But despite setting ambitious climate targets in 2019, Pretoria’s latest plan to counter the crisis proposes to keep the coal-fired stations open and dramatically increase gas imports: Renewables could offer a more sustainable solution: “South Africa has some of the best wind and solar resources in the world — there is no need [for more fossil fuels],” one South Africa development expert wrote in The Conversation.
South Africa becomes caught in US culture wars
The Trump Administration’s singling out of South Africa over a controversial land law, with the White House “pledging support for white South African ‘refugees,’” is a sign of the “bizarre policies that result from seeing the world through Elon Musk and MAGA-colored glasses,” the Council on Foreign Relations wrote. While Washington’s relations with Pretoria were already on edge over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the Trump administration’s ire seems more based in rhetoric: South Africa may provide a handy “cautionary tale,” Max du Preez, a white South African writer and historian told The New York Times: “It plays into the fears of white people in America and elsewhere: ‘We whites are threatened.’”