LIST OF PANELS

African countries contribute the least to global climatic change but are arguably the most impacted by its negative impacts. Compared to the rest of the world, African countries also have the least number of people connected to modern energy services - electricity. Indeed, twenty four of the twenty five least electrified countries in the world are in Africa. These two problems are intertwined in several ways. For example, African countries have been historically dependent on hydroelectricity but this is an increasingly precarious energy source due to drought; African countries need to provide electricity at the least possible cost to provide services to the poor and to businesses, but the price of provision in the region is the highest in the world and the least cost electricity has often come from fossil fuels; and, African countries are being encouraged to use small-scale, renewable electricity to meet demand, but are having to do so with limited financial resources and using models of provision that are extremely complex and that have not been used in other regions of the world. Hence, at the same time as governments grapple with the challenges climate change presents, they must also seek resources and devise policy responses that meet human and economic demands for improved services.  How are African governments confronting these interrelated challenges? What factors are conditioning the policy responses of African countries and are these responses effective? Indeed, what does policy effectiveness mean when the complexity of the problems are so profound and intertwined? Are African countries becoming global climate and energy policy leaders or just serving as a site for global policy experiments?  

Research on climate change and energy provision in Africa have followed several paths. A great deal of work has examined the impact and effectiveness of energy sector reform at the country level, focusing on policy and institutional change.  Other work has considered the political economy of reform, focusing particularly on the role that private capital and multilateral and bilateral development agencies have played in facilitating investments in new renewable and non-renewable sources.  A third line of more recent research is focusing on how policy choices are responding to the principles of equity and justice in service provision and climate action, interrogating whether poverty alleviation and human well-being can be imbedded at the same time as trying to rapidly adapt to climate change and meet infrastructure needs.  For this in-person panel, participants are encouraged to develop hypotheses that consider how governments mediate the global and domestic tensions in their policy responses.  Hypotheses could focus on the democratic norms or practices of the country; resource endowments; dependency on international or private finance; state capacity and civil society engagement or participation in policymaking.

Papers are invited that consider one or both policy challenges of climate adaptation and/or energy provision in Africa. Papers using a diversity of research methods, from a range of disciplines, and focused on one or more countries on the continent are welcome and encouraged, this includes countries north or south of the Sahara. What should unify the paper submissions is a desire to critically interrogate national policy responses to climate change, energy provision or both. Papers should acknowledge how national policy action is evolving and responding to social, ecological and economic needs of the country. This could include a focus on how policies and programs are: meeting the needs of citizens, thus focusing on equity and justice in policy; mediating the demands or priorities of the global political economic system, thus focusing on questions of policy diffusion, agency, or resistance; and, responding to the domestic political, economic, social and environmental conditions of the country, thus focusing on state capacity and autonomy in policy design and implementation. Ultimately, papers should go beyond describing how climate change is affecting countries, or the state of energy access in one or more countries. Papers should examine the complexity of these policy problems, develop hypotheses about conditions when states act in particular ways to respond to these challenges, and  share original knowledge in order to help place African experiences centrally in policy theory.