Dr Clement Sefa-Nyarko, a lecturer in Security, Development and Leadership in Africa at the African Leadership Centre (ALC), was among 77 academics chosen recently by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of its Future Leadership Fellowship (FLF).
The FLF provides up to seven years of funding of up to £120 million to support early career researchers
UKRI’s Chief Executive, Professor Sir Ian Chapman, said the FLF offered “long-term support to outstanding researchers, helping them turn bold ideas into innovations that improve lives and livelihoods in the UK and beyond”.
With more than a decade’s experience in designing, managing and leading several projects in Africa and the Asia Pacific, Dr Sefa-Nyarko’s area of expertise includes natural resource governance, political theories of the state and social protection.
He will use his FLF to analyse how people understand and experience justice during the shift to cleaner energy.
According to the project paper, the fellowship is responding to the “dearth of knowledge that leads to deep contestations over the origins, meaning and purpose of ‘justice’ in the transitions to net zero emissions”.
“The methodology offers an exchange of meaning between the producer, author or storyteller and the audience, which if holistically interpreted, allows them to share a deep sense of reality, whether fictional or factual,” the project paper said.
“It enables the collection and analysis of aspirations that would otherwise be restrained in formal research designs.
“This FLF’s innovative methodology will capture and synthesise the ‘voices’ and ‘silences’ of people who are impacted but would otherwise not be heard in policymaking.”
Dr Sefa-Nyarko, in welcoming the FLF, said it was “an extraordinary opportunity to contribute to the new, rapidly emerging, often evoked and yet largely evasive, concept of ‘justice’ in critical minerals governance and the transitions to net zero”.
“It presents both an opportunity and a challenge, both of which I embrace, and see King’s and all my partners in Australia, Chile and Ghana as very well placed to support this endeavour to achieve the three-tier objectives of epistemic consensus, global policy relevance and mining community satisfaction.”
The Justice in Critical Minerals Governance and Energy Transitions research programme was launched during Africa Week at King’s, which ended over the weekend.
Professor Frans Berkhout, Assistant Principal King’s Climate and Sustainability, commended Dr Sefa-Nyarko for seeing through “a small idea flowering into this project across three continents”.
A one-time Minister of Solid Minerals in Nigeria and currently Visiting Professor at the ALC, Kayode Fayemi, said in a keynote address that when he was appointed minister, “one reality that dawned on me incredibly early was that our policies were designed for extraction, not for development”.
He said: “We measured success in tonnage.
“We celebrated volume, not value.
“We congratulated ourselves when mining companies renewed their licences.
“Yet the question we must ask ourselves often is: what is a tonne of lithium worth when it leaves African soil?
“Perhaps a few thousand dollars.”
He went on: “What is the same tonne worth when it returns to us inside a battery?
“Tens of thousands, perhaps. What is it worth when it is inside an electric vehicle in Lagos or Nairobi? More still.
“We have been selling the raw material and buying back the finished product at 10 times the price.
“That is clearly not trade. That is a tax on our own poverty.
“We cannot mine lithium in Zimbabwe, ship it to the Americas or Asia, watch it become battery, and then borrow money from the World Bank to buy electric buses.
“That is not partnership. That is paternalism and dependency dressed up as global trade.
“And that was one issue that we addressed in the RoadMap for the Growth and Development of the Nigerian Mining Industry when I assumed office as minister.”
Prof Fayemi added: “So, the renewed global attention presents an extraordinary opportunity for African states, while it has also triggered a race for supply chain dominance that mirrors the extractive dynamics of the past.
“And we must be clear-eyed about what is happening right now. We are seeing a new scramble for Africa.
“It does not look like the Berlin Conference of 1884. There are no maps being drawn on tables in European capitals – at least, not visibly.”
GNA
