RSVP and join TUED on Wednesday, August 16th, 0800 – 0930 Eastern US to discuss: Reclaim and Restore: Preparing a Public Pathway to Address Energy Poverty and Energy Transition in sub-Saharan Africa.
Reclaim and Restore
In mid-May 2023, unions from 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) came together in Johannesburg to lay the groundwork for a public pathway approach to addressing the challenge of energy poverty in the region.
Convened by TUED South, the 3-day meeting discussed a draft position paper that brings to light the abject failure of neoliberal approaches to addressing energy poverty in the region.
Focusing on the World Bank, the paper describes how the Bank’s structural adjustment agenda of the 1990s targeted public utilities and redirected financial support to for-profit independent power producers (IPPs). The results have been devastating. Today half of the region’s population (roughly 600 million people) have no electricity, 70% in rural regions.
The document has been updated and is available here. It advocates for a “reclaim and restore” approach to energy utilities so they can begin to repair the damage of the past 30 years.
We will first hear from TUED unions based in Namibia, Uganda, South Africa, and Kenya. View the draft program here.
Please RSVP for the Global Forum here. Interpretation will be provided in English, French, and Spanish.
New TUED Union: Independent Education Union of Australia (IEU). Welcome IEU!
The Independent Education Union of Australia (IEU) represents over 75,000 workers in non-government schools and institutions across Australia. Learn about IEU’s work on their website and Twitter (X).
In solidarity,
The TUED Team
Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) is a global, multi-sector trade union initiative to advance democratic direction and control of energy in a way that promotes solutions to the climate crisis, energy poverty, the degradation of both land and people, and responds to the attacks on workers’ rights and protections. TUED is is part of the Global Labour Institute Network.