Explaining Higher Performance in Africa's Energy Transitions: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Policy Mixes

Africa, like the rest of the world, has embarked on a difficult journey towards a sustainable energy transition. Also, like other regions on the planet, its experience exhibits a few similarities in performance and a large variation in policies. Some countries lead the region showing almost identically relatively high performance whereas others display equally low performance. At the same time, they do so while implementing different policies. This suggests that different sets of policies produce similar results, some policies work better than others, and that the interplay among them is relevant. To identify the policy mixes associated with higher performance in Africa and account for their relative success, a sample of 22 countries with 560 policies in total is studied. Qualitative Comparative Analysis, a set‐theoretic approach to study causal complexity configurationally, is applied to reveal the policy portfolios. Socio‐cultural viability theory, which accounts for effectiveness in terms of encompassing all relevant perspectives, is employed to explain leading policy mixes. The results reveal one configuration linked to higher energy transition performance in the region, covering seven countries (Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa) that exhibit policy mixes encompassing the three active worldviews (individualism, hierarchy, and egalitarianism), providing support for the theory's hypothesis.