This week, the fossil fuel industry will meet in Cape Town at a massive conference known as Africa Energy Week.
They
are planning a new push to scale up fossil fuels for “geopolitical leverage”,
initiate a “new era” of fossil fuel discoveries, expand into Africa’s “least
explored frontiers”, increase their profits through “enhanced oil recovery techniques”
(i.e. fracking), redraw Africa’s oil and energy map through new pipelines, and
to change laws and regulations to achieve these goals.
“The
Africa Energy Week program is a systematic plan by the fossil fuel industry for
the massive scaling up of oil and gas in Africa. It’s a declaration of war on
Africa’s sustainable future and the global climate crisis, this is NOT the
Africa we want,” said Courtney Morgan, Campaigner for the African Climate
Reality Project.
On
a continent where fossil fuel infrastructure has left 600 million people
stranded without energy access, has polluted and dispossessed communities, and
is now ravaging Africa with droughts, fires and floods from climate change, the
industry is seeking to “change the narrative of oil and gas development” and
characterize it as crucial for an “energy-rich” and “sustainable future”.
Attended
by senior European officials and corporations, the Africa Energy Week
conference is also an important stepping stone in Europe’s wider effort to
“pivot” to Africa for fossil fuels, and to capture Africa’s energy supply for
its own use.
The
EU has already changed its own rules to falsely claim that fossil gas and
nuclear energy investments can be “green”, as a stepping stone to scale up
investment and consolidate influence over Africa’s energy supply. It now
requires some Africans to take ownership of this European agenda by claiming it
as an African agenda.
Landry
Ninteretse, 350Africa.org Regional Director stated that: “The push for
investment in fossil fuels is likely to perpetuate the triple injustices of
energy, social and environmental crises hundreds of millions of Africans are
confronted with. Such plans will not only lock the continent into reliance on
climate-wrecking energy sources but also delay the much-needed transition to
renewable energy. It is imperative that officials at Africa Energy Week revise
their message and prioritise sustainable, inclusive, and diversified energy
plans that directly benefit Africans and protect their basic rights,
livelihoods, environment, and future”.
At
the Africa Energy Week conference, Petroleum Ministers from the African
Petroleum Producers Organization (a group of 18 African countries producing
fossil fuels) are planning to “share and prepare” a message that the African
continent will present to the world at the upcoming COP27 climate summit,
according to the conference program.
A
small subset of African Ministers representing petroleum interests, are
expected to assert that “oil, gas and nuclear” have returned to the scene as
crucial for energy security, that African Ministers reject the “European View
of Energy Transition'', and that Africa “establishes its own narrative and its
own solutions”.
This
will open the door for Europe to respond “to African demands” and then invest
heavily in oil, gas and nuclear (to produce hydrogen) for export to Europe.
Europe, in turn, will greenwash this pivot at COP27 by announcing a handful of
new projects – including so-called “Just Energy Transition Partnerships” – to
camouflage this agenda.
This
plan to use Africa’s development and energy access crises as excuses to double
down on fossil fuels needs to be called out. Fossil fuel developments take
decades to come online, concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few,
sacrifice the health of communities and ecosystems, and don’t even deliver
energy to Africans - they’re primarily being planned for export to Europe.
Renewable energy has the potential to put real power in the hands of the people
and can come online across the continent in a matter of months. That should be
the real focus of the money and decision making power attending Africa Energy
Week.
Dean
Bhekumuzi Bhebhe, the Campaigns Lead for Power Shift Africa, stated that: "Collusion
by European and African energy elites to continue colonising the continent with
dirty energy infrastructure, will saddle Africa with dangerous projects that it
doesn’t need, entrench the energy apartheid facing millions of Africans, and risk
tipping Africa and the world into catastrophic climate disruption."
