Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: South Africa’s government endorses a new energy policy, Nigerians protest the detention of an Igbo secessionist leader, and Kenyans remember former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: South Africa’s government endorses a new energy policy, Nigerians protest the detention of an Igbo secessionist leader, and Kenyans remember former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

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On Sunday, South Africa’s government unveiled an energy policy that aims to cut the country’s dependence on coal and end rolling blackouts, both of which have hampered economic growth for more than a decade.

Years of underinvestment in an aging fleet of coal-fired plants, which provide more than 80 percent of South Africa’s electricity, and systematic corruption within state utility company Eskom have led to electricity shortages. Eskom generates around 90 percent of the country’s electricity.

The revised Integrated Resource Plan would see South Africa invest around $127 billion in energy infrastructure by 2039, particularly in nuclear power and natural gas. The policy aims for nuclear and gas combined to account for 16 percent of total power generation, compared to around 4 percent at present.

South Africa currently has two nuclear reactors and plans to add more than 5,200 megawatts of extra capacity. Although the country sources much of its natural gas from Mozambique, it is looking to develop its own gas fields, too.

The plan does not foresee abandoning coal entirely, but rather making it “clean”—a controversial idea that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government first floated in 2023. So-called clean coal involves removing pollutants from coal-fired plants before they enter the atmosphere, such as through carbon capture. Critics argue that the technology is unproven and that capture rates are low.

South African Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said coal would drop from 58 percent to 27 percent of the country’s energy mix over the next 15 years. Wind would increase from around 8 percent to 24 percent, and solar from around 10 percent to 18 percent, he said.

“We are going to get cleaner,” Ramokgopa said, adding that a clean coal plant would be constructed by 2030 using newer technology that is less polluting. “We are not abandoning coal. We don’t have a coal problem, we have an emission........

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