From 15-17th December 2025, the United Nations University’s Institute of Natural Resources in
Africa(INRA) and Utrecht University, convened its Dare to Share workshop uniting stakeholders
from academia, the Ghanaian government, International development organisations, NGOs, and
climate experts, to confront the urgent need for equitable legal and institutional frameworks in
Africa’s green transition.
This high level workshop on Equity, Law and Power: Reassessing Transitions for a Post-Carbon
Future, highlighted the complex social, economic, and environmental inequities that shape who
benefits—and who bears the costs—of the continent’s transition. Most importantly, this
convening space allowed for various voices often marginalised in the Energy Transition
conversation to be heard. This is the essence of UNU-INRA’s Dare to Share Knowledge
Platform. This initiative seeks to expand spaces and amplify voices to meet the increasing
demand for a just and equitable transition towards greater sustainability.
A key element of the workshop was the importance of who owns the narrative in the Energy
Transition. According to Prof. Fatima Denton(Director, UNU-INRA), “Narratives are instruments
of power. If you control them you control power. The work is not done until we get the narrative
right.”
Core to the workshop’s agenda was recognizing how entrenched structural inequalities, gender
disparities, informality, and uneven access to climate finance, technology and intelligence,
dictate opportunities in emerging green sectors. Participants emphasized the central role of
national legal frameworks in embedding fairness, protecting the most vulnerable, and ensuring
that development priorities remain aligned with justice. As Prof. Fatima Denton highlighted, “a
transition cannot be considered ‘just’ if it ignores marginalised voices; if we don’t have justice,
we don’t have transition.”
The workshop dissected the multi-dimensional justice principles vital for a true Just Transition—
including procedural, distributive, restorative, intergenerational, and climate justice. Participants
examined structural and regulatory barriers to embedding justice in transition agendas, focusing
on critical issues such as persistent gender inequity in green entrepreneurship, dominance of
informality in the economy, and the exclusion of community voices in energy and resource governance.
Specific challenges were mapped, from women’s limited access to agritech resources and
underrepresentation in technical sectors, to the struggles faced by rural
communities(indigenous)—especially women and youth—in navigating overlapping energy and
development needs. “Equity is not just about gender, youth and indigenous communities. It's a
function of the entire nation state developing its economy and being able to deliver projects in
which fairness is embedded from the international to local context,” noted Xolisa Ngwadla. The
event called for justice -centred legal reforms that guarantee social protection, uphold labor rights, and institutionalising community participation across sectors.
Against a backdrop of evolving international pressures—including new trade and investment
laws, rising demand for critical minerals, and external mechanisms like the European Union’s
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)—the workshop underscored the need for
robust regional legal cooperation. Participants stressed that African countries must strengthen
frameworks through instruments like the African Continental Free Trade Area to ensure
equitable participation and avoid reproducing extractive patterns.
