Dr Desné Masie is an economist and journalist, specialising in international political economy, and sustainable finance. She is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at LSE and a Professor of Practice in economics at Hult International Business School. She is the Chief Executive of Intelligence Labs, a research and innovation hub for scaling sustainable finance. Dr Masie is the recipient of a Pulitzer Center grant.
I was fortunate to contribute a chapter to this volume on the “McKinseyification” of economic policy in the blue economy alongside Professor Patrick Bond, a leading voice in the environmental resistance movement. This book, edited by another former colleague, Professor Vishwas Satgar, explores how capitalism's addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced. This book is the third in the Democratic Marxism series and investigates eco-socialist alternatives that are emerging to capitalism’s extractive frameworks of “imperial ecocide” within the Anthropocene. It brings together in one volume leading academics, climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements who are “advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life”. Satgar opens the book with a chapter on systemic alternatives while other authors explain the limits of capitalism to solve the climate crisis, the rights of nature and alternative measurements of progress such as wellbeing and equality through the African philosophy of Ubuntu.
Professor Njuguna Ndung’u is the current Cabinet Secretary, National Treasury & Economic Planning for the government of Kenya. Prof Ndung’u is one of the most eminent economists globally. As Kenya’s central bank governor, he was a key proponent of the development of the digital currency Mpesa in 2007 alongside DFID, Safaricom and Vodafone. This edited volume Ndung’u compiled alongside Professor Paul Collier and Professor Christopher Adam is essential reading on sustainable development and gives some clues as to the kind of economic policy setting in which sustainable finance can flourish in East Africa. It explains how the economic progress made by African countries over the past couple of decades can be supported by the decisive leadership of a new generation of economic policymakers by fostering macroeconomic stability alongside a coherent strategy for sustainable growth and poverty reduction. This book is great because it explores the issues in an accessible way.
The Oxford-trained Nigerian economist, Dr Zainab Usman, is a senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Usman has made many thoughtful contributions to the study of economics in Africa over the years, but her reflections in this book, which looks at economic diversification in Nigeria, shows a pathway from the fossil fuel economy and as such, is, in my view, an important contribution to sustainable finance. For sustainable finance to scale, capital needs to move out of fossil fuels into other investable assets and industries. Usman argues that Nigeria's major development challenge is not the 'oil curse', but rather one of achieving economic diversification beyond oil, subsistence agriculture, informal activities, and across its subnational entities. The recipient of the FT’s book of the year in 2022, this book is required reading for anybody interested in pragmatic alternatives to the status quo.
Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher and activist. He is the North Africa Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI). He co-authors this book with Katie Sandwell, Programme Coordinator with the Transnational Institute. This book is described as an important intervention on the study of the Arab region, which “is a focus of world politics, with authoritarian regimes, significant fossil fuel reserves and histories of colonialism and imperialism. It is also the site of potentially immense green energy resources”. The book also explains how a just transition in the region is being sabotaged by an extractive, (neo)colonial agenda through policies and practices that protect global and local political elites, multinational corporations and military regimes. The contributors cover a wide range of countries including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Palestine.” Hamouchene has also written ‘The Struggle for Energy Democracy in the Maghreb’.
Dr Chukwuma Ome's oeuvre is wide-ranging on many overlapping disciplines of sustainable finance such as environmental economics and eco-feminist economics. However, the article of his that I think is most thought-provoking in the context of sustainable finance is this one. This article uncovers some stark statistics about deforestation in Nigeria and reveals that Nigeria has the highest rate (after Vietnam) of forest depletion from 2000 to 2005. The country lost 139067 ha of forest area yearly, from the period 1990 to 2005. This means that Nigeria has lost 35.7 per cent of forest cover within this period. It is frightening to think that back in 2017 the authors were recommending urgent steps towards regenerative agriculture, or the country would face the loss of all forest areas by 2052. Given sustainable finance also aims to solve global challenges under the SDGs, there is a really big opportunity for Nigeria in carbon markets and for reforestation incentives in the UN REDD+ scheme
This book is a very thorough exposition of the key reforms required for sustainable development in Africa. Much of the financial sector policy development in Africa has focused on banking and fintech based reforms at the expense of market-based financial reforms. This means that there are more opportunities to explore how the financial sector can support responsible investing and broad-based economic growth that also addresses climate change and human development. Excluding South Africa, Sub-Sahara has the biggest need for scaling financial sector depth to support inward flows and capital accumulation. This study aims to provide “a one-stop shop for understanding the history and evolution of the financial sector in Africa with a special focus on the sub-Saharan region where the financial system in many countries is still at a relatively nascent stage. The analysis is extensive and robust, and starts from financial repression to financial liberalisation (both internal and external), and its role in sustainable development and poverty alleviation”.
A literal handbook, issued by Carbon Trust, The World Bank, GIZ and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange it covers everything you need to know about sustainable finance. Takes through definitions, use cases, frameworks, ecosystems, glossaries, and asset classes.
The handbook is composed of four core chapters, “accompanied by detailed analyses mapping global sustainable finance instruments and products, analyses of the state of enabling environments and prevailing norms and standards, consideration of methodologies by which financial sector and capital market stakeholders may integrate sustainability into decision-making processes and advance opportunities”.
This book takes a technical view of ESG in the global context and looks at how it applies to Africa in the context of impact finance. Really useful for anyone thinking of going into project finance in Africa or into the measurement of the performance and impact of sustainable investments. It uses economics, statistics, finance, strategic management and mathematics with an African focus. A pretty standard take on the issues and probably a good primer to read before delving into some of the wilder controversies in sustainable finance listed here. Hailing from the Gambia, Karamo NM Sonko has worked at the UN and IMF. Mariama Sonko is an expert in sustainable finance and has trained at Harvard and Cambridge.
A veteran asset management research specialist, Wahome asks in this book: “How did South Africa, a country at the southernmost tip of Africa with a turbulent past and a relatively small and still-developing economy, come to house one of the most significant asset management industries in the world?” The book explores how the industry today is responsible for the financial wellbeing and empowerment of millions of citizens from all walks of life from its difficult, humble beginnings. This is essential reading for how to build pools of capital and deploy investment in ways that can boost national savings and wealth and deliver infrastructure by building financial market depth and capacity as well as the regulatory frameworks that should accompany this. The final chapter looks in detail at the groundbreaking impact investment funds and fund managers in South Africa, which is a hub for investment the wider continent. There can be no durable shift to sustainable finance in Africa without the financial infrastructure of the asset management industry.