Africa has seen oil shocks before. Why 2026 could be the turning point for clean energy

Africa has been here before. Oil climbs above $100, import bills balloon, Finance ministers across the continent convene emergency sessions, and somewhere in a development bank boardroom, a clean energy investment pipeline gets quietly deprioritised while everyone waits for the price to come back down.

In 2008, the global financial crisis interrupted a Brent spike that had touched $147. In…