Originally published in The New York Times, March 7, 2025.
The meeting rooms were full of former Power Africa officials, however, and they questioned whether the Trump administration would muster much follow-through. “The biggest question is whether the U.S. can be a credible partner when we’ve just dismantled our main mechanism for investing in African energy,” said Katie Auth, the former deputy director of Power Africa.
She and others acknowledged that an increasing focus on low-carbon energy made the program a target for an administration that is hostile to what its officials often call the “climate change alarm industry.”
But Ms. Auth also noted that not only did Power Africa invest in gas, but that the plummeting cost of renewable energy technology has made those forms of power the fastest and cheapest to deploy in many African countries.
“I think they don’t realize that Power Africa was never a climate initiative,” Ms. Auth said. “It was driven by economic viability and driven by U.S. firms.” She added, “If anything, this is the encapsulation of the kind of assistance this administration should want to do.”
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