Dealing in Decarbonisation? A Political Economy Analysis of Senegal’s Just Energy Transition Partnership

Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) have emerged as tailored climate finance packages to support the decarbonization of fossil fuel-dependent countries in the Global South, symbolising a new regime of international climate cooperation in an increasingly contentious geopolitical landscape. Senegal’s JETP Agreement with Canada, the EU, France, Germany and the U.K., was signed in 2023, marking a departure from the pattern of targeting coal-dependent economies as recipients of JETP finance. While the Agreement aims to facilitate Senegal’s low-carbon transition, it notably includes an exception for the country’s nascent offshore fossil gas sector—a divergence from the fossil fuel phaseout conditionality imposed on other JETP recipients South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Additionally, the JETPs more broadly have sparked criticism for potentially prioritising the political and economic interests of donor countries in the Global North over the development agendas of recipient countries in the Global South. Senegal’s JETP was concluded amid the European energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, coinciding with Europe’s efforts to diversify fossil gas imports, including from African nations. This research investigates the political dynamics shaping Senegal’s JETP using the Actors, Objectives, Context political economy framework, analysing how the agreement is constructed and its implications for climate governance. The study identifies key gaps and loopholes in Senegal’s JETP that undermine meaningful climate action, focusing on the roles and influence of state actors, private sector stakeholders, financial entities, and civil society organisations involved in the JETP process. This research also examines the appropriation of “just transition” narratives—originally intended to balance environmental goals with labour movement demands—by non-civil-society actors with extractivist agendas. Through qualitative semi-structured interviews and document analysis, the study contributes to scholarship on the role of international climate finance in confronting or reinforcing the hegemony of fossil fuel infrastructures and policy capture. Our findings reveal an alignment of state and private sector interests in subverting the stated climate mitigation goals of Senegal’s JETP to advance the production and trade of fossil gas. Exploiting Senegal’s fossil fuel reserves serves multiple agendas, offering domestic economic and energy development, aligning with foreign state actors’ interests in cheap fossil gas imports, and enabling fossil fuel corporations to expand extraction frontiers. Various civil society and environmental actors oppose the agreement’s appropriation of “just transitions” and the Senegalese government’s strategy of exploiting fossil gas as a “transitional fuel.” By contextualising the dynamics of Senegal’s JETP deliberation, this study highlights broader challenges to implement equitable energy transitions in fossil fuel-reliant economies, offering insights for the design and governance of international climate finance.