By Vijay Jayaraj

For decades growth strategies in poorer countries of the Global South – Asia, Africa and South America – leaned heavily on energy-intensive industries powered by fossil fuels and, in a handful of cases, by nuclear power. Cities grew, factories rose, exports surged, poverty declined.

This growth slowed under the weight of decarbonization dogma and financial restrictions. However, just as the region faces the choice of either asserting its energy sovereignty or resigning itself to stagnation, an unexpected force from the U.S. has risen to potentially beat back the climate cult.

In the early 2000s, nations like China and India doubled down on coal to industrialize, achieving annual growth of over 7%. Sub-Saharan Africa followed suit, with oil and gas exports funding infrastructure.

But decarbonization agendas, driven by wealthier nations through bodies like the United Nations, imposed restrictions on this model. International financial institutions and donor nations increasingly attached conditions on financing arrangements – among them bans or limits on fossil fuel development while expressing an aversion to nuclear power.

These measures sought to force a shift to intermittent wind and solar energy, which fail to provide the scale and reliability needed for round-the-clock factories. Result? Growth forecasts dipped, and the World Bank lowered growth projection to less than 4% for many African economies.

Africans currently dependent on subsistence agriculture and raw material exports need manufacturing to create wealth and raise living standards. Industrialization requires electricity measured in megawatts and gigawatts, not the trickle of electrons that solar panels and wind turbines provide.They need energy prices low enough to compete with manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, all of which prioritize energy affordability over “green” purity.

Natural resource-rich nations that should be climbing the value chain by developing processing and manufacturing facilities find themselves stuck as exporters of raw material. They ship iron ore to China where it is turned into steel and soybeans to Europe where they are transformed to processed foods. The value addition happens elsewhere because the energy infrastructure needed for manufacturing faces persistent opposition from climate activists and their allies in government.

Every dollar wasted by the developing world on impractical “green energy” projects is a dollar not spent on the natural gas pipelines, power plants and high-voltage transmission lines that would enable long-term economic progress.

The recent shift in U.S. energy policy offers a glimmer of hope. For the first time in years, a major Western power has acknowledged that imposing “green” energy preferences on developing nations is economic sabotage.

The Trump administration has signaled that it will no longer support bans on financing of fossil fuel projects. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been particularly forthright in stating that developing nations should have the freedom to use their own resources to power their growth.

Vijaya Ramachandran, a respected voice on the economics of African energy, captured the importance of this policy shift. She notes that the message from the current U.S. administration represents a fundamental break from previous approaches. Rather than dictating energy choices to sub-Saharan Africa, Washington now recognizes that African nations must exploit their hydrocarbon reserves to meet industrial needs.

The continent’s manufacturing sector cannot develop without reliable power for factories and private enterprises. Large-scale industrialization, which has yet to occur across much of Africa, requires exactly the kind of infrastructure that previous U.S. leadership discouraged.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, over 600 million people still lack access to reliable electricity. Every child who grows up without electricity, every worker denied a factory job, every family trapped in poverty because industrial development was blocked represents lost opportunity for better lives.

The Global South is not asking for a handout but for a level playing field. It is asking for the same opportunity that the West has had for centuries – the chance to use its own resources to build a bright future for its people.