Energy poverty in Africa cannot be solved by increasing fossil fuel extraction since doing so will exacerbate the “climate disaster,” for which Africans already pay “with their livelihoods and their lives,” according to Ugandan climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate.
She stated at the annual Trust Conference on Thursday that some developing countries are thinking of conducting their first oil and gas exploration to assist pay interest on loans they are taking out to recover from storms, floods, and droughts caused by climate change.
The 25-year-old said, “In the midst of the war in Ukraine, European politicians are stating they need African states to build new fossil fuel infrastructure to replace Russian supply.”
“And on top of this, big oil and gas companies are pretending that we need new fossil fuel development in Africa to lift people out of energy poverty” – even though most of the supplies will end up being exported to Europe, Nakate said.
About 600 million Africans – 43 per cent of the continent’s population – still have no electric power, she noted.
“I want to be clear about this: big oil and gas companies have been promising to lift people out of energy poverty for decades. It’s a lie,” said Nakate, who began her climate justice activism in 2018 after being inspired by Greta Thunberg.
“The pipelines and power lines from coal and oil and gas plants will never reach those who live at the last mile and these corporations know this.”
If projects such as the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline in Uganda and Tanzania go ahead, the profits from the new infrastructure “will line the pockets of people who are already very rich”, she said.
And when it becomes obsolete in a couple of decades, the loans made to build it “will suffocate Africans who are already drowning in existing debt”, Nakate added.
For the softly spoken activist, the only workable, climate-friendly solution to bring electricity and development opportunities to poor, remote communities in Africa is local renewables such as solar home systems and minigrids.
“That is the cheapest, fastest way,” she added.
Some African governments – including Nigeria and Senegal – say they need to use gas as a “bridge” fuel while they build up renewable alternatives such as solar and wind, emphasising their tiny contribution to planet-heating emissions so far.
The issue could prove a sticking point for efforts to seek more funding from wealthy governments at the UN COP27 climate summit in Egypt next month for a transition to clean energy.
“If you want to call fossil fuels ‘a bridge for Africa’ then let’s please be accurate: fossil fuels are ‘a bridge to nowhere’,” Nakate said. “We cannot eat coal. We cannot drink oil. And we cannot breathe gas.”
She also criticised Britain – which hosted last year’s COP26 talks in Glasgow and is pressing other countries to step up their climate action – for announcing it would open up 100 new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea, and being “hopelessly off track” for its own climate targets.
