Iain Banner on Go Green Africa’s new Section 18A status
Exclusive interview with Iain Banner, Founder and Chairman of Go Green Africa (GGA), the South African non-profit organisation launched during the inaugural Cape Town E-Prix in 2023. Since then, GGA has advocated for the green economy transformation within Africa through conferences, such as Africa’s Green Economy Summit and Carbon Markets Africa Summit.
Q: Thank you for joining us. Can we do a quick recap on the background of Go Green Africa and its aims?
Go Green Africa really flowed out of our staging Formula E Cape Town and my drive for us to create a legacy initiative. The race itself was very important for South Africa, I believe. It showcased what we able to do on the global stage and fortunately it ran extremely well and was voted Best Race of the Year. But most importantly for me, it’s about the impact that we can achieve off the back of that and its impact around sustainability on the green economy. We created Go Green Africa and it’s doing its thing. It’s exciting. And we’re to talk a little bit more as we get into the interview as to exactly what it’s been up to and how it’s doing. But it really aims to push corporates to Go Green, to showcase how that can be done, to be an organisation of influence and it’s also given birth, if you think of it as a tabletop and not for profit, it’s given birth to four table legs which are growing themselves very significantly.
Q: GGA has now obtained Section 18A status which means partners will be able to claim a deduction from their taxable income from SARS. How important is this?
The finance team has worked very hard and it is not easy to secure a Section 18A tax status with SARS. It’s been done. And the reason that’s significant, it allows corporates to participate together with us and to benefit from a tax deduction for the monies that it contributes towards helping Go Green and its activities of pushing the green agenda. It’s very important. We needed it, we’ve got it, I’m delighted.
Q: How do you see the green economy alongside the traditional economy?
This is an interesting question. How do I see the green economy alongside the traditional economy? Let’s call it the black oil and gas or heavy carbon emitting economy. I think it’s a big mistake when you start to push hard for the green economy without recognising the fundamentally important role that traditional energy sources have played and continue to play in the future of the growth of the world. For us, and for me in particular, green sits very much as the clean alternative. It needs to be economically viable in order to be adopted. We are working very hard to help showcase technologies that allow for production in a green manner, and that is starting to bear fruits around the world.
But we are really at the beginning of a journey. And the notion that green will completely replace the black economy are misplaced in my view. It will always have a role. You have to think about the enormous infrastructure that’s been created to support the black economy that continues to play into business today. And the green economy is really that lovely alternative that you choose when it makes sense and when we find solutions that allow for it to make economic sense too. Even if it is a little bit more costly, it is worth doing without a doubt. We have a massive crisis right now with our climate, and I’m excited about the future that lies ahead.
Q: What have been some of the highlights of the GGA journey so far?
Well, let’s think of that tabletop where we have the likes of Eskom and Uber, the car company, and Siemens have verbally agreed and coming on board—it was pending our Section 18A status that’s been secured. We also have one of the big four banks in South Africa joining us. And there will be many more that come alongside us. And we want both polluters and solutions.
We’ve had deep discussions with Sasol, and I’m hoping that they’ll be with us too. So when people say, ‘oh, you can’t take on the polluters’. ‘Well, why not?’ is my question to them, because until you have them inside the tent, how can you possibly help to influence outcomes going forward?
Apart from this tabletop, the highlights without doubt, though, have been the development of Africa’s Green Economy Summit. It is going into its fourth year in February next year. It connects global capital with African green economy opportunity. And we are seeing some very positive growth of AGES, as we call it, and we’re very excited about the future. I often compare it to the Mining Indaba, which has been around for a very long time, but it has a huge impact in the mining sector. We want to have a huge impact on the green economy and help to create jobs and grow the economy of South Africa and Africa as the total continent. So that’s exciting.
Now we do have Carbon Market Africa Summit that takes place 21 to 23 October in Sandton. The response to this has been very, very good. It’s a complete look-see at the carbon market, the carbon world, carbon credits being a part of that. I personally have a view, and I’ve seen how carbon credits can help to really help protect large landscapes in Africa. Peace Parks are doing wonderful work in this regard. Carbon credit funding is important, and we’re pushing into that as well through Carbon Markets Africa Summit.
Then we have our wonderful skills development chapter or leg of the table, which is really helping a thousand students, it’s called Formula Student Africa. We have about a thousand students from ten universities in South Africa on board, being lectured by Warwick University on EV skill sets and preparing these engineering students for the marketplace when they have qualified. We hope to be able to take that into schools with Coventry University supporting us. So that’s a really important piece of what is now not the future, but the current, the whole EV world. And then we have a fourth leg, which we will announce in due course. So that’s some of the impact that’s being enjoyed. The journey is an exciting one. Of course, we still have so much to do. And in fact, we are only just getting started.