Africa’s green transition is projected to generate between 3.8 and 7.9 million jobs by 2030, scaling to between 65.9 and 84.5 million by 2050. But the shape of this opportunity differs from the utility-scale, infrastructure-led model common in high-income markets. Africa’s transition will be service-led and decentralised, delivered through informal networks, nano-enterprises and independent operators — with clean cooking, solar home systems, waste recycling and electric two- and three-wheelers driving most employment growth.

Commissioned by FSD Africa, Shell Foundation and Shortlist, and produced by Genesis Analytics, this report extends the 2024 Forecasting Green Jobs in Africa study in four ways: modelling indirect employment alongside direct jobs, introducing clean cooking as a value chain, projecting employment to 2050 under technology and climate risk scenarios, and disaggregating employment by formality, gender, enterprise size and income across Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

It moves the analysis from estimating the scale of the opportunity to understanding who can access it, and what needs to change for more workers — particularly women, youth, informal and low-income workers — to do so.