Slide 1

The Stolen Dreams of Africa

MBONG’S MEMOIRS

8 minutes read ● by Mbong A. FT

In September, Frans Timmermans, the EU Commission Vice President and the man in charge of leading its work on the European Green Deal and the European Climate Law, delivered a revealing speech to a delegation of African leaders.

Europeans, he explained, have their own problems and would not worry about climate impacts in Africa when they need to stay warm in winter. He told them some European countries might keep their climate finance pledges, but there are no guarantees. In his words, with inflation and other economic pressures upon Europe, the loyalty of European states lies with their people. He advised African leaders to take the path of clean renewable energy and to seek baseload only when it is green to do so.

While discordant to many in Africa, these words can also be liberating. More and more Africans are showing in small and big ways how uninterested they are in being told what to do, who to stand up for and when to stand up. This justified anti-neo colonial sentiment is also freeing Africans from perpetually waiting for the old colonial master’s favour and focusing on what we – and our leaders – do for ourselves.

But as far as the climate crisis goes, African leaders couldn’t be more out of line. In justifying its plans to auction off the forest for oil, the Congolese government said it cares more about its people than gorillas, all the while trying to sell an area greater in size than Ghana. Some gorillas would indeed lose their habitat, but many more people would see their lands grabbed and water sources seized and polluted. In many cases, many people would be displaced.

This is in line with the intention of many African leaders to use COP27 to encourage more oil and gas activities, a move which will benefit the same neocolonial forces driving the fossil fuel industry, giving big oil and a handful of local elites another boost. Local communities meanwhile will be left with pollution, trashed ecosystems and extreme weather events. With all those fossil fuels being exported, European households may be heated this winter, but it won’t do much (if at all) to end our energy poverty and connect 568 million Africans to the grid. The choice those African governments are making, apart from a few important outliers, perpetuates an extractivist colonial legacy, which sees no potential in the brains and the skills of Africans and only ascribes value to what is buried in our soil. It is and will remain a way of servicing the carbon intensive lifestyle of rich countries while deepening hardship in African communities.

We may be troubled by the speech of the EU’s senior official and the broken finance promises from global north countries, but we should be absolutely livid about the faith that many African countries are putting in fossil fuels.  

Africa can do so much better than use Europe’s sluggish reduction in harmful emissions as an excuse to raise our own. Instead of replicating the mistakes that Europe says it wants to repair through decarbonising its homes and industries, our leaders can advance a carbon-free continent while it’s still growing and being built. Our leaders can focus on the interest of Africa’s people facing the daily threats of the climate crisis and the value of a good life that is in harmony with nature. 

I write this with hope, rather than with naiveté. 

The loyalty of African leaders towards their people seems shaky, and the commitment by rich economies to pay for loss and damages that their economic growth had created for us is questionable. Yet there is hope in organised communities who are resisting in the face of the climate crisis.

It is these communities who are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that the East African oil pipeline (a French and Chinese project) never sees the light of day. It is such communities that have told Chinese companies in Lamu, Kenya, that their coal project will not happen in their backyard. It is the same resilience and determination that communities on the Wild Coast of South Africa have shown, sending Shell and its plans for seismic blasting packing. 

It is ordinary people and communities who are mobilised for justice for people and the planet making a difference, from courts to the streets. They are mobilised to demand clean air and respect for nature. They are changing the rules of the game that the old guard is pushing.

They know that it is a neocolonial model of extraction and exploitation that has deepened hardship for many of them. These communities know that the multi billion dollar projects are never about them. They know that the neocolonial model of extraction and exploitation is always about growing the profit margin of big multinationals and lining the pockets of elites who have remained in bed with the oppressors. Before the floods, droughts, contaminated water, or toxic air, they know they have no choice but to resist and fight the greed that puts profits before people and the planet.

The resilience that African communities continue to show, in defending their lands, protecting the quality of the air they breathe and the decentralised economic gains that come with protecting the riches that nature has given them, is indeed the hope of Africa in the face of the climate crisis.

This Opinion was first published in the Mail & Guardian and then by The East African