Dangote Joins Tech Titans Like Gates, Zuckerberg and Bezos To Combat Climate Change

Alhaji Aliko Dangote joined big names in Tech like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to launch the Breakthrough Energy Coalition which comes on the heels on the COP summit in Paris where world leaders are expected to reach a deal on carbon emission cuts worldwide. Quite notably, only two business leaders from Africa were on the list of the founding members namely Aliko Dangote from Nigeria and Patrice Motsepe who is the Founder and Executive Chairman, African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) from South Africa. Both nations represent two biggest economies and control nearly 60% of the entire data centre space on the continent. Together they represent over 230 million of the entire over 1 billion African population. In addition, majority of the continental multinationals are headquartered in the two nations and this means they are by far the two most industrialised. This means that both nations have much to in combating the effects of climate change.

A statement on the Breakthrough Energy Coalition reads “We are committed to doing our part and filling this capital need by coming together in a new coalition. We will form a network of private capital committed to building a structure that will allow informed decisions to help accelerate the change to the advanced energy future our planet needs. Success requires a partnership of increased government research, with a transparent and workable structure to objectively evaluate those projects, and committed private-sector investors willing to support the innovative ideas that come out of the public research pipeline.” Facebook announced a clean energy powered data centre in July where it said the data centre will run on 100% renewable. The members of this group are committed to funding research into cleaner sources of energy.

Here’s a list of the founding members o f the Breakthrough Energy Coalition;