Janne Luise Piper

Abstract: The European Union (EU)’s transition to renewable energy, urgently needed to fight the climate crisis, will require large amounts of minerals and metals, also known as ‘critical raw materials’. However, these materials are scarce and face supply challenges. To secure access to mineral supply chains, the EU has recently started to build strategic partnerships, particularly with countries in Africa, where 30% of the world’s known mineral reserves are located. Yet, only few academics and policymakers have comprehensively addressed justice at the intersection of the energy transition and minerals yet. It further remains unclear what increased Africa-EU cooperation on these minerals implies for a just transition. Moreover, existing research has so far neglected Global South perspectives on evolving partnerships. Hence, this thesis studies how different perspectives, interests, and concerns shape the potential for just Africa-EU mineral value chain partnerships for the energy transition and how this influences just transitions. Taking a decolonial justice lens, a mixed methods case study of the EU-funded AfricaMaVal project is conducted. Based on a rapid literature review, semistructured interviews with both European and African actors, topic modeling, and critical discourse analysis, this thesis finds that just partnerships are significantly impeded, predominantly by colonial European perspectives and interests. This, in turn, hampers pathways to just transitions. While AfricaMaVal advances fair procedures (procedural justice) and ESG commitments (distributive justice), shortcomings have been found concerning a disregard of both colonial continuities in today’s partnerships (recognitional injustice) and of African value addition interests by EU actors (structural and recognitional injustice), as well as perceived injustices in interpersonal treatment (interactional injustice). These findings demonstrate the need for policy action towards justice now in order to harness contemporary energy and climate transitions as a window of opportunity to alter long-lasting structural injustices, promote just transitions, and effectively tackle the climate crisis.