Urban Matters: Cities and their Citizens | 19 August 2025

OPEN SECRETS | The Climate Con? How Management Consultants Are Cashing in on the Climate Crisis
Date: 19 August 2025
Time: 1pm-2pm
Venue: Seminar Room, Geography Department, UWC

In June 2025, Open Secrets released an investigative report – The Climate Consultants – that uncovered how large private managements consultancies are playing an increasingly central role in steering South Africa’s climate response—with little transparency or accountability. These consultants are often linked to donor countries, and have so far received 65% of all committed grants funds meant for South Africa’s Just Energy Transition (JET). Less than 25% has gone to NGOs, Universities, and other public sector entities.

Given the track record of private consultants, it is concerning that they are cornering the market for advice on the climate crisis and a just transition. The climate crisis and how we address it is one of the most urgent and defining issues of our time. South Africa is the first Global South country to conclude a formal Just Energy Transition Partnership agreement with international donors, yet the country’s response is increasingly being shaped by management consultants who see this as a new frontier for profit taking.

There is the need for an urgent public debate about how we hold these unelected private technocrats to account. We must critically assess their impact on South Africa’s pursuit of an energy transition that is just and benefits the most vulnerable and immediately affected members of society.

Open Secrets is a fearlessly independent African civil society organisation which exposes and builds accountability for private sector economic crimes through investigative research, advocacy, and the law. We hold the profiteers of economic crime, human rights abuses, and war to account. They are powerful corporations and private individuals, along with complicit state institutions and politicians.

Please RSVP at this link by 17 August 2025.

Refreshments will be served

About the Urban Matters seminar series

The Urban Matters seminar series creates a forum for rigorous debate on the politics and practices that shape urban Africa. Through interdisciplinary conversations, we explore the intersections between urban governance, infrastructure, inclusive understandings of citizenship and the lived experiences of all urban residents, and what these intersections reveal about the possibilities for building more equitable, sustainable cities. The series foregrounds both grounded empirical research and theoretical innovation, inviting critical engagement with the roles of citizens and institutions in shaping urban futures.

This Seminar Series is a collaboration between University of the Western Cape’s Politics and Urban Governance Research Group, the Citizenship and Democracy Niche Area, and the Department of Geography, Environmental Studies and Tourism.