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C40 CITIES INTERVIEW: “The right kind of transport interventions can have a much higher impact on overall GHG emissions in a city or country”

Exclusive interview with Lusanda Madikizela, Head: Zero Emission Freight Transport (based in South Africa), C40 Cities. Lusanda is also a member of the advisory board of Africa’s Green Economy Summit.

Please can we start with this some background about you and your career so far?
Hello everybody. My name is Lusanda Madikizela. I’m the head of Zero Emission Freight with C40 Cities, and I’m based in South Africa. My background is basically in urban planning, but I’ve actually spent most of my career in transportation planning, working on sustainable transport projects. We started with the introduction of more sustainable ways of moving people, trying to get people out of their cars and into public transport, which was the most sustainable way to go and still is. And now I’m working on clean transportation.

Working on the introduction of zero emission vehicles, both in the public transport space and also for businesses that are able to be part of the transition to zero emission freight vehicles as well, moving goods, that has been my work for the past 24 years or so. For the past two years, since the start of the annual Africa’s Green Economy Summit, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in the summit, both as a panellist and now as a member of the advisory board for the summit.

Tell us more about C40, especially its African members, and your role there.

C40 is a global network of mayors. We’ve got membership literally across the world. We’ve got membership of the leading cities of the world that are united in action to confront the climate crisis. So we work with cities that already have made that commitment. And at the moment we’ve got just under a hundred cities that are members of C40 Cities, with 13 of those being on the African continent, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

So that’s C40 Cities, and we are really committed to working with cities for them to implement climate action plans and programmes that confront the climate crisis and also illustrate the importance of transitioning our economies to be less fossil fuel dependent and also less dependent on the combustion engine. Just to be able to show that these alternative economies are actually viable, they can lead to economic growth, they can lead to more inclusive communities and broader and thriving economies as well.

What are you most excited about regarding zero emission freight transport on the continent? What is your vision for this and what are the main challenges

What I am most excited about for zero emission freight on the African continent is basically the technological advancements that we have seen over the last couple of years. We’ve seen a bigger range of vehicles. We’ve seen vehicles that have ever-improving technology and improving batteries that are increasing in range.

And we do think the African continent is in the best position to actually show how you can leapfrog in terms of technology, because already a number of other countries have had a lot of time to experiment with this technology, and right now, with the rapid developments, we can actually illustrate on this continent how possible it is to actually leapfrog completely away from the combustion engine and to show and illustrate what it means to operate zero emission vehicles, both from a public transport perspective and also for businesses.

Particularly our informal businesses that have been at the forefront of transporting both people and goods on the continent. We want to illustrate for them what the transition looks like with the sort of limitations they have with access to finance and also the more informal type of businesses that they operate.

In terms of the main challenges that we’ve seen, we’ve seen that access to finance, as I’ve mentioned,  is still a very big challenge, particularly for your smaller and informal businesses. Financing institutions tend to be very risk averse, so they don’t really participate much in the financing of the informal economy.

Secondly, they’re also risk averse from a technology perspective, because they don’t really understand how the technology works, so they prefer to fund what they already know and are comfortable with and where they can see exactly what the total cost of ownership is, and how long the vehicles are going to last. There is a lot of proven technology with the combustion engine, and we’re still sort of developing those with clean transport alternatives.

We’ve also seen that there is a lack of policy support. This is changing, but there’s still a lot that needs to be done in terms of policy support to ensure that manufacturers firstly bring these vehicles to the continent, and are also even encouraged to actually establish local manufacturing bases for zero emission vehicles, so that we can grow the market here on the continent and ultimately lead to increased access to more affordable vehicles.

How important is green and clean transport for the achievement of a low-carbon, climate resilient future?

The green and clean transport technologies and approach are actually very important for the achievement of a low carbon future, because transport as a sector is usually in the top two or top three highest emitters in any economy or in any city. So when you make the right kind of interventions in the transport sector, you actually have a much higher impact on the overall greenhouse gas emissions that a country or a city is emitting. So just by making those interventions in the transport sector, you’ve already made a significant contribution to GHG reductions.

Second, transport, the movement of goods and people, has a very direct impact on how people experience the spatial sense of the city. So when you make interventions into how goods and people are moved in a city, it actually transforms the environment as well in that people are experiencing cleaner air or experiencing less congestion and getting to really interact with the urban form of the urban space in ways that are different and that encourage, you know, increased access of people and increased movement of people interacting with the urban space.

This also helps local businesses, because when you’ve got more foot traffic, people being able to walk past your business instead of whizzing past and driving past at a very fast speed, and having people being able to access spaces that they would have previously just driven through. So that does actually transform the urban space and also transforms economies as well. So from those two perspectives, transport is very important for what a climate resilient future actually means and how it’s experienced on the ground.

You are a member of the advisory board of the upcoming Africa’s Green Economy Summit. How important is such an event for the continent?

Africa’s Green Economy Summit is a very important, annual gathering for the sector and for the continent, because it gathers like-minded individuals who are working individually wherever they are: in the companies that they are working for or in the startups where they are really just tinkering away and trying to push the sometimes passion projects that they are working on in a very isolated manner. So being able to gather in a room with like-minded individuals is a very positive thing for the movement, because then people will be much more inspired to actually do more, and people also have access to two sets of people that are very important.

Your policymakers, because when they speak and meet with policymakers, they are able to actually present their ideas, present the barriers and the challenges that they’re working with, and in that way it also then leads to transforming the policy sector and making the policy space more accommodating of the initiatives that are out there, so that things can move a little faster, and things can be a little better for all the different startups that we are seeing in the sector and in the sustainability space. They’ve actually experienced a lot of policy impediments. So it’s important for them to have access to policymakers.

It’s also important for them to have access to financiers. Africa’s Green Economy Summit offers that valuable pitch space for them to actually pitch ideas to investors, pitch small businesses, and be able to show proof of concept for businesses that they’ve been testing. There have been some great deals that have been able to be made from those gatherings, and businesses are growing and thriving and have been able to actually illustrate what the possibilities are for economic growth in the sustainability sector.

How do you think AGES can have an actual impact?

Yes, Africa’s Green Economy Summit can have an actual impact. As I mentioned, the interaction between policymakers, financiers, businesses on the ground is a very vital interaction, because from there you can actually have actual business deals that are financed and implemented on the ground, actual projects that can create both jobs and also lead to the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions for the various countries. I think every country on the continent and across the world now has already signed up to nationally determined contributions to how they are going to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions.

So, gatherings of this nature help us to be able to keep track of what the potential activities are, and the progress that countries are making to ensure that there is the right kind of policy support. It’s also just the right kind of space for private businesses and public entities and big corporations to be encouraged to increase their climate ambitions, increase their sustainability targets and also increase the amount of money that is available to make this happen in the sector.

How can the youth on the continent be made to feel part of this movement of growing a greener economy?

It’s very important to engage the voice of the youth, not only to engage with them, but to actually ensure that their voices and opinions are amplified in spaces like Africa’s Green Economy Summit, and in other spaces where decisions are actually made. The youth plays a very valuable role because they keep us all accountable, right? Because the decisions that we make, we always have to think about the kind of planet that we are going to leave in the hands of the youth.

So, they play a very important role in the spaces that they’re in, they keep us accountable. They ensuring that we are always increasing our ambitions and also ensuring that we remember that this is actually about a climate emergency. These are not projects that we are doing as nice-to-have  projects. There’s an actual emergency that we’re dealing with.

So the youth is very important in ensuring that we are kept accountable for the decisions that we make today. And it’s important that we ensure that their voices are actually part of all the decision-making processes that we implement.

About the author

Guest Contributor

VUKA Group

VUKA Group serves as Africa’s central nexus for conferences and media publications across key sectors. With 20 years of expertise as a trusted media partner, we allow those with valuable insight to contribute to building a platform of collaboration to shape Africa’s future for the better