COP31: Why Africa Must Rethink Nuclear Energy

By Farai Shawn Matiashe Reprint | | Print |

Campaigners protest against nuclear energy at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

ANTALYA, Türkiye, Nov 11 2026 (IPS) - Gabriel Sheunopa Manyangadze holds a placard reading “No nuclear spin, let renewables win” as a campaigner leads protesters against nuclear energy in Africa at the United Nations climate summit in Antalya, Turkey.

The activists warned African leaders of the investments required to establish nuclear energy and the dangers its waste poses.

“We have realised that when people put nuclear forward as a solution, they are only looking at it from a short-term perspective. They do not look at the long-term effects that include pollution,” Manyangadze, a food and climate justice manager at the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute based in South Africa, told IPS during a protest against nuclear energy as a climate solution at the ongoing Conference of the Parties, or COP31.

South Africa is the only country on the continent that has a commercial nuclear power plant.

Located in Melkbosstrand near Cape Town, the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station has an installed capacity of around 1,854 MW, providing roughly 5% of the country’s electricity. Its units will operate until the 2040s.

But there are concerns about the sustainability of this nuclear power plant.

False Climate Solution 

Manyangadze said the power generation company is struggling to dispose of nuclear waste.

“They are dumping the liquid waste and the solid waste that is being generated from the power plant in a place called Vaalputs, but the area is still radioactive, affecting the environment in the surrounding areas,” he said.

The Vaalputs National Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility is South Africa’s primary and only radioactive waste disposal site in the Northern Cape. The 10,000-hectare site handles near-surface disposal of solid and solidified low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste from Eskom’s Koeberg Nuclear Power Station. Nuclear waste remains radioactive for up to 300,000 years.

Though the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) licenses and regulates it, with continuous environmental and seismic monitoring showing no detectable radiological impact outside safe limits since operations began, farmers fear leaks into nearby water could affect agricultural productivity.

Manyangadze said that communities who live around this area have not prepared for a disaster. “We work with the people around the nuclear facility, and they are not clear on what to do in case of a disaster,” he says.

There are concerns about the capacity of African governments to handle and prevent a nuclear disaster.

There have been major nuclear disasters around the world after explosions released radioactive materials into the environment, affecting thousands of people and polluting the environment.

The Chernobyl Disaster in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 involved a flawed safety test combined with operator errors that caused an uncontrolled power surge, triggering a steam explosion that released massive amounts of radioactive isotopes across Europe, leading to the deaths of dozens of people and the permanent evacuation of over 160,000 people.

An earthquake and tsunami caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on 11 March 2011. The floods knocked out active cooling systems and backup diesel generators, resulting in explosions, the deaths of dozens of people and the displacement of 164,000 people.

Some parts of Africa are facing climate change disasters like floods, mudslides, landslides, and storms, which are becoming more frequent. Such weather poses a threat to power plants, as happened in Fukushima.

At the United Nations climate summit in the Mediterranean country, the COP31 presidency is pushing for a global target to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35%, up from the current 20%, by 2035.

Proponents of nuclear energy are pushing for investments and the expansion of nuclear reactors to generate electricity to meet this global electrification target.

Rachitaa Gupta from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice said that nuclear energy is not the solution that is needed to fix the energy crisis in the Global South.

“Most of this nuclear energy is being pushed on indigenous lands. It is our communities that are subjected to uranium mining and its devastating consequences,” she said.

“Our lands are being destroyed for nuclear energy plants, but the power does not even go to the people. It powers data centres that are being promoted by big technology companies. This is not for the people but for corporations.

South Africa’s Eskom and the Department of Electricity and Energy plan to procure an additional 5,200 MW to 10,000 MW of nuclear capacity by 2039 under the Integrated Resource Plan 2025. They plan to start public consultations in late 2026.

Togo, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Morocco, Ghana and Egypt are some of the African countries that are also considering nuclear energy.

Russia’s Rosatom is constructing a four-unit El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant, 320 kilometres northwest of Cairo. The first nuclear power plant in the country and in the region, El Dabaa, will generate 4,800 MW of electricity.

Amos Wemanya, a senior climate advisor at Power Shift Africa, a research group in Kenya, said that nuclear power is not the best energy option for Africa right now because it takes a long time to set up, while the continent needs energy quickly.

“These people need access to electricity as soon as possible so that this power can help them power their development, power their prosperity. It takes a very long time to build a nuclear power plant,” he said.

“So we cannot be investing our limited resources at the moment in an energy system that is not going to help our people achieve our development as soon as possible.”

Nuclear energy requires high upfront investments running into billions of dollars, which are relatively lower once the plant is operational. A kilowatt is $5,300, or about $6bn more for a single large-scale reactor, estimates the World Nuclear Association. This is beyond the reach of most African countries that are struggling to service their debts and provide services like health, jobs and education.

Manyangadze said nuclear energy will ruin the South African economy.

Alternatives 

About 600 million people lack access to electricity in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for roughly 85% of the global population lacking electricity.

Gupta said they protested that if there is a push for energy, it needs to be clean, renewable energy, and not polluting energy, like nuclear energy.

“The model must not be the same as the fossil fuel energy systems, which are exploiting our communities,” she said.

Wemanya said that Africa needs an energy source that can transform the lives of communities.

“We need an energy system that is easy to deploy. There are so many alternative sources, renewable sources such as solar, that are easy to deploy and can benefit off-grid communities,” he said.

He said that wind and solar are cheaper alternatives compared to nuclear energy. “We cannot afford to invest in a nuclear energy system that is not fit for purpose for our continent,” he said.

According to the IEA, Africa contains 60% of the world’s best solar resources.

“And in most of the countries, particularly from where I come from in Southern Africa, we have the sun, and we can actually build our energy around renewables like the sun and the wind,” Manyangadze said.

IPS UN Bureau Report