The year 2023 will have been a successful one for South Africa and Egypt in terms of progress on sustainable development. The two countries are ranked top in Africa in a sustainability report produced by analysts from the Swiss agency Horizon. The evaluation criteria focused on measures and investments by both the public and private sectors.
Egypt stood out in six categories, including sustainable transport, energy transition, environmental ecosystems, the circular economy and “green technologies”. The initiative that worked in favour of the country of the pharaohs in this ranking was the memorandum of understanding signed by the Global Carbon Council (GCC), a carbon credit provider based in Qatar, and the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX) “to promote climate action around the world”.
South Africa tops the Horizon report thanks to its “national industrial strategy for biofuels”. The 647 business leaders from 17 countries who gave their views on sustainability in the rainbow nation first noted the recent billion-dollar partnership between the Pretoria government and the World Bank. This will accelerate the energy transition in a context marked by load shedding. In addition, there is the “formal code of governance”, which encourages South African companies to take the environment into account in their day-to-day activities.
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The progress of other countries in Africa, particularly in the East, is also mentioned in the report. Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya, for example, are noted as good performers in the fight against pollution through their massive investments in electric mobility in 2023. However, the report mentions that climate change is impacting the financial health of at least 49% of companies on the continent, before concluding that “each country has its own priorities in terms of sustainability, depending on economic strengths, energy dependence and other factors”.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi