Achieving the SDGs through a Resource Nexus Approach: Lessons from the African E-mobility Transition

Abstract The Resource Nexus concept is designed to find the best systemic solution to the sustainable management of environmental resources through the consideration of interlinkages, trade-offs and synergies. This concept is of growing importance to academia, policy makers, and professionals in the field, gaining wide-spread recognition. It is often claimed that the Resource Nexus approach inherently supports implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, although very little empirical evidence has been produced to support this. This study analyses how this assumed connection holds through the case study of the dynamically growing African e-mobility sector. Relying on original data gathered from semi-structured interviews with management personnel in fourteen leading e-mobility companies across Sub-Saharan Africa, it is shown that while a Resource Nexus approach helps in understanding the issues facing the sector in a novel way, there exist some issues with the concept that reduce its usefulness in practice. The main problem is that none of the industry professionals knew of or used the concept, the second most pressing problem results from recent definitional attempts that have removed the concept out of the reality of business people. For this case, the results indicate the presence of a strong Energy-Climate-Waste-Nexus within the mobility transition that have mutual interactions with SDGs 3, 7, 9, 11, 12 and 13.