By Vijay Jayaraj
When people in London, Vienna and Berlin were at risk of power outages due to energy shortages, their governments turned to coal-fired plants to rescue them. We saw this when Russia’s gas embargo forced European nations to halt their coal burning – something like a product shortage that sent vegetarians to restaurants. steak restaurant.
But what about Africa? Millions of Africans are being systematically forced by the elites of Europe and North America into a future free of fossil fuels and rife with poverty. This is carbon imperialism, where Western leaders, who have embraced climate superstitions, control the kind of energy that people in Africa use.
Philosopher Olúfếmi O. Táíwò call The phenomenon that creates climate colonialism, defines it as “foreign domination that deepens or expands through climate initiatives aimed at exploiting the resources of poorer nations or infringe on their sovereignty”.
The story of economic success is the same no matter where one looks: North America and Europe in the industrial age or India and China of recent decades. In any case, fossil fuels are a key driver of meaningful and lasting economic development.
To expect Africa to produce the same from thin air (literally wind technology) is arrogantly negating the physical reality of electricity generation and the energy poverty of millions.
“Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest energy access rates in the world,” report Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “Electricity only reaches about half of the people; About 600 million people lack electricity and 890 million people cook with traditional (polluting and harmful) fuels”.
ESI Africa Online Publications shown that “a family in the UK heating a kettle twice a day uses five times as much electricity as a person in Mali uses per year. It takes a Tanzanian eight years to consume as much electricity as an American consumes in a month, while a freezer in the US consumes 10 times more electricity than a Liberian in North Africa uses in a year.”
As a result, Africans have most of the energy supplies, far less than what is considered basic convenience in the rest of the world. And there is no end to poverty in sight.
The solution to Africa’s immediate energy needs and long-term economic improvement is to invest more in coal, oil and natural gas – fuels that offer reliability and affordability.
“It is through the production of goods, be it value added in agriculture, high-tech components, tractors, machine tools, household appliances or even bread, that African economies near Sahara will reduce poverty by providing productive jobs and promoting economic growth.” PD Lawton explaineda researcher committed to the restoration of the continent.
The International Energy Agency notes that current investments in the electricity sector, particularly in fossil fuels, are far below the required level, although easily achievable. However, Africa, already underfunded, faces campaigns to ban funding for fossil fuel projects.
Climate crusaders accomplish their goals through international policies and domestic measures. Internationally, carbon imperialists use devices like the Paris Agreement to ban hydrocarbons. Further stifling development, major funding institutions are blocking the flow of capital for fossil fuel projects. The World Bank, the African Development Bank and many major European donor organizations have announced that they will not fund any new such initiatives in Africa.
This is condemning African countries for their perpetual poverty and reliance on unreliable renewable energy installations. At the domestic level, the climate crusade is led by environmentalists and so-called climate justice groups.
In South Africa, for example, activists in 2021 asked Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe to abandon plans to develop a new generation of 1,500 megawatt coal-fired power plants or face trial. Grass-roots activism and propaganda are the main tools of global carbon imperialists to sway public opinion.
However, more and more leaders stood up against the empire. In June, Niger President Mohamed Bazoum said, “Africa is being punished by decisions by Western countries to end public funding of foreign fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022… We will continue to fight, we have fossil fuels that should be mined.
“Let the African continent be allowed to exploit its natural resources. It is truly unbelievable that those who have been exploiting oil and its derivatives for over a century have prevented African countries from exploiting the value of their resources.”
President Bazoum was right. Using energy resources available in nature is an inalienable right of all sovereign states. The fate of Africa should be decided by the people.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at CO2 Alliance, Arlington, VA., and holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, UK. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
This comment is first published by Real Clear Energy July 27, 2022
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