Africa goes nuclear?

 African access to electricity is the lowest in the world. Fossil fuels and hydropower dominate Africa’s energy generation mix. Renewable sources like solar and wind contribute just 1.6% of the energy in Africa.

Energy demand in Africa is projected to grow by 80% by 2040. That is, at 3.5% per year, faster than the global average of 1.3%.

 As such, several African countries have expressed interest in nuclear power.

 South Africa is the only African nation with a 1.86GW operational nuclear power plant.  Egypt commenced the construction of the four 1200 MWe reactors as part of its ambition to provide steady electricity to its people over the next decades.  Uganda announced that it was pushing ahead with its plan to put up a 2000 MW nuclear reactor plant to be commissioned by 2031. A team had just cleared the East African country of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to proceed to the next stage of using nuclear for peaceful application.

Uganda’s Energy and Mineral ministry’s permanent secretary, Irene Batebe, sais that nuclear power would be part of the country’s effort to meet its Net Zero ambitions.

“As we are going into the energy transition, nuclear power is a very clean option for as long as you manage the waste very well.”

Some say Africa cannot afford the cost of putting up nuclear reactors. Uganda, for example, needs $9bn for the 2000MW plant. 

Ugandan Electrochemical Energy Conversion expert, Dr Justus Masa, argues that rather than spend $9bn on nuclear, Uganda should invest in solar and geothermal.

Germany has installed solar capacity of 50,000 Mw. It has only about six months of sunshine a year. During the summer, they can go 100 percent renewable. Looking at the price of solar energy. I see that solar has enormous potential for us in Africa. I could see that solar is cheaper than nuclear,” 

Energy: Why Africa Must Be Part of Nuclear Energy Appetite | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

The African Climate Crash

 

African countries, which are the least responsible for the global climate crisis, face seeing their GDP growth rate fall by up to 64% by the end of the century, even if the world succeeds in limiting global heating to 1.5C., according to a study commissioned by Christian Aid.

 It found that burning fossil fuels at the current rate will have a huge impact on the finances of African countries. The average hit to GDP per capita could be as much as 34%, finds the report, while the effect on GDP growth will lead to an average 20% reduction in rates by 2050 and a huge 64% on average by 2100.

The 54 countries of Africa account for 15% of the world’s population but contribute less than 4% of the CO2 heating the planet, in contrast to 27% from China, 15% from the US and 17% from the EU. But it is the continent most affected by catastrophic climatic changes such as rising sea level and melting glaciers, as well as increasingly erratic and destructive extreme weather events such as drought, wildfires, floods and heatwaves.

Under current climate policies, the GDP growth of eight countries – Sudan, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, and Nigeria – could be reduced by as much as 75%. The worst hit nations generate less than 0.43 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per person, in contrast to the US and Canada generating 14 and Saudi Arabia 18 tonnes per person. Sudan, where this year heavy rains and flash floods affected more than 250,000 people in 15 out of 18 provinces, economic growth could be hit by a staggering 84% under global current climate policies.

 "...these numbers might be conservative estimates,” said Marina Andrijevic, an economist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna and a study co-author.

So far this year, more than 200,000 homes have been destroyed by floods and landslides in Nigeria, while 37 million people face starvation after four consecutive droughts in the Horn of Africa. 

A UN report published last week found that international adaptation finance is five to 10 times below what developing countries actually need, and the gap is widening every year.

Climate crisis will have huge impact on Africa’s economies, study says | Africa | The Guardian

COP27, What about the refugees and displaced?

 “COP27 must equip countries and communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis to prepare for extreme weather, to adapt, and minimize the impact of the climate emergency,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. “We cannot leave millions of displaced people and their hosts to face the consequences of a changing climate alone.”

Over 70 per cent of the world’s refugees and displaced people come from the most climate-vulnerable countries including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Yemen. 

Inside Somalia, nearly one million people have been displaced by drought and the threat of famine. 

Devastating cyclones in Mozambique have affected tens of thousands of people previously displaced by violence.

While South Sudan and Sudan are battling record floods for a fourth consecutive year. 

More than 3.4 million displaced people and their hosts are facing the consequences of recent destructive flooding in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and the Central Sahel countries of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali – a region already experiencing one of the world’s worst displacement crises.

In Cameroon’s Far North, inter-communal violence has erupted between herders, fishers and farmers over dwindling water resources as Lake Chad and its tributaries have dried up from drought. Over 100 people were killed or injured late last year, and tens of thousands fled their homes.

UNHCR’s Grandi urges world leaders not to forget displaced people at COP27 [EN/AR] - World | ReliefWeb

Fossil Fuel Colonialism

 

African nations combined contribute no more than 3% to cumulative CO2 emissions, while the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom are responsible for nearly half. Yet they are the most vulnerable to ravages that go hand-in-hand with a warming planet.

Leah Namugerwa, a young Ugandan climate activist asked whether it was "justice for world leaders to choose profits over lives."

    A historic prolonged drought in Kenya has caused over 90% of water sources to dry up. Crops are failing, and animals are dying, meaning that many people do not have enough to eat. Wealthy nations have so far failed to live up to their commitments to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries pay for adaptations such as flood defenses or drought-resistant crops. Ruto said on Monday that failure to fulfill the pledges has created a persistent "distrust."

Kenyan President William Ruto said the drought had "visited misery on millions of people" and had caused over a billion dollars in economic losses. He called "delaying tactics" and "procrastination" on climate action "cruel and unjust." The government has diverted large amounts of money from health and education to provide food aid to millions of affected Kenyans, Ruto said. Having to make such trade-offs is an example of how climate change harms the development of vulnerable states and the futures of their citizens, he added. Ruto announced plans to convene an African continental summit focusing on climate action, green growth and sustainable transformation next year. He also announced a plan to increase Kenya's tree cover from about 12% to 30% over the next 10 years.

Just 2% of global investments in renewable energy over the past 20 years were made in Africa. Instead of supporting a transition to renewables, European countries are scrambling to find alternatives to Russian fossil fuels and are in a "dash for gas" in African countries.  Former US Vice President Al Gore said that the Global North had to "move beyond the era of fossil fuel colonialism." He called the moves a "dash down a bridge to nowhere, leaving the countries of the world facing climate chaos and billions in stranded assets, especially here in Africa."

Nemat Shafik, a leading economist and director of the London School of Economics, explained,  "Many African countries are rich in sunshine, wind, rivers and forests. With support, they could leapfrog the dirty energy systems of the past."

 Shafik said, "The green industrial revolution could be the new growth story for Africa.

Africa faces climate disaster but is also a beacon of hope – DW – 11/07/2022

The Climate Threat to the Nile

 At more than 6,600 kilometres long,  the world’s second-longest river, the Nile,  extends to 11 countries, including Tanzania, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt, it is essential to the survival of millions of people living in Africa. But a combination of climate change and human overuse is drying up the river, and worsening conditions for farmers who fear low harvests and loss of electricity. 

In the past 50 years, the flow of the Nile has fallen from 3,000 cubic metres per second to 2,830. 

A lack of rainfall and increased droughts expected in East Africa means river flow could fall by 70 percent by 2100, according to UN forecasts.  The UN has predicted a loss of 75 percent of available water per local inhabitant. Related land erosion, crop loss and lack of electricity are also likely to have a dramatic impact on the millions of people living in Africa who rely on the river for survival.  

 Located between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Lake Victoria is the largest supplier of water to the Nile, with the exception of rainfall. Yet evaporation, lack of precipitation and changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis mean the lake is now at risk of disappearing. One 2020 study analysed historical and geological data from the past 100,000 years and found that the entire body of water could vanish in the next 500 years. This would have a striking impact on the Nile, a river whose basin covers 10 percent of the African continent and which is an essential resource for 500 million people living in its vicinity.  

In Egypt and Ethiopia, lack of access to water among people living along the Nile is already an issue due to politics rather than climate change. Priority of access is currently given to large-scale agricultural businesses as opposed to local inhabitants. There is a lot of competition for water intensified by agribusinesses that grow produce for export. Policies that aim to export water from the Nile in the form of tomatoes or cucumbers do not take into account the local populations that need this water. Climate change threatens to worsen the situation for millions of people. Lower water levels due to global warming will impact those who are already the most in need.

In the Nile Delta – the sediment-rich landform where the river meets the Mediterranean Sea. This area is one of the three locations in the world most vulnerable to global warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as the weakened flow of the river struggles to push back the sea’s rising water levels. Every year since 1960 the Mediterranean has worn away between 35 and 75 metres of earth in the Nile Delta. If it were to rise by one metre it would submerge 34 percent of the surrounding region in northern Egypt, displacing 9 million people.  

Dwindling river reserves are worsening the problem. The less water there is in the Nile valley, the more the Nile Delta will be invaded by water from the Mediterranean. This does not just bring the risk of ground erosion and flooding, but also changes the composition of the river. The layer of groundwater beneath the river delta is increasingly made up of saltwater from the Mediterranean as less and less freshwater is arriving.   Along the northern banks of the river the water is becoming more saline. Very little drainage water (freshwater from the river) is making it to the Mediterranean; less than 1 billion cubic metres of water, which is ridiculous compared to what there was 40 or 50 years ago. Already, salt from the Mediterranean has polluted hectares of land, weakening and killing plants. Farmers have reported a reduction in the quality of vegetables.Already, salt from the Mediterranean has polluted hectares of land, weakening and killing plants. Farmers have reported a reduction in the quality of vegetables.

if temperatures continue to increase, the Mediterranean will advance 100 metres into the Nile Delta each year. Over time it estimates the Mediterranean could swallow 100,000 hectares of agricultural land situated at less than 10 metres below sea level. This would be catastrophic for Egypt, where the north of the country accounts for 30 to 40 percent of national agricultural production.

In the 10 countries that the Nile runs through, the river is not just a source of water, but also of energy. Sudan generates more than half of its electricity resources from hydropower. In Uganda, the figure rises to 80 percent.  But this energy source is becoming increasingly unreliable. If rainfall goes down, water levels in Lake Victoria and the Nile will go down as well, which will reduce hydroelectric production. In Uganda electricity cuts are already a frequent occurrence.

 In Ethiopia, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) aims at creating 13 turbines capable of producing 5,000 megawatts of electricity per year. Since August, 22 billion cubic metres of water have been stored in the dam’s reservoir, which has a total capacity of 74 billion cubic metres.  Egypt fears a drastic reduction in the flow of the Nile if the GERD fills too quickly. In Egypt, farmers have already seen the effects of the Aswan Dam – one of the world’s largest embankment dams. As with dams in Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan, it has reduced levels of silt – a precious natural fertiliser – in the water. 

Crisis on the Nile: Global warming and overuse threaten Africa’s longest river (france24.com)

Africa's Climate Crises

Africa has suffered disproportionately from the climate crisis, although it has done little to cause the crisis. The damage to Africa should be of supreme concern to all nations. The climate crisis has had an impact on the environmental and social determinants of health across Africa, leading to devastating health effects. 

Climate-change-related risks in Africa include flooding, drought, heatwaves, reduced food production, and reduced labour productivity. 

Droughts in sub-Saharan Africa have tripled between 1970–79 and 2010–19. In 2018, devastating cyclones impacted 2·2 million people in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. 

In west and central Africa, severe flooding resulted in mortality and forced migration from loss of shelter, cultivated land, and livestock. 

Changes in ecology brought about by floods and damage to environmental hygiene has led to increases in diseases across sub-Saharan Africa, with rises in malaria, dengue fever, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Lyme disease, Ebola virus disease, West Nile virus, and other infections.

Rising sea levels reduce water quality, leading to water-borne diseases, including diarrhoeal diseases, a leading cause of mortality in Africa. Extreme weather damages water and food supply, increasing food insecurity and malnutrition, which causes 1·7 million deaths annually in Africa.  

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, malnutrition has increased by almost 50% since 2012, owing to the central role agriculture has in African economies. Environmental shocks and their knock-on effects also cause severe harm to mental health. In all, it is estimated that the climate crisis has destroyed a fifth of the gross domestic product of the countries most vulnerable to climate shocks.

It is highly unjust that the most impacted nations have contributed the least to global cumulative emissions, which are driving the climate crisis and its increasingly severe effects. North America and Europe have contributed 62% of carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution, whereas Africa has contributed only 3%.

 It is not just for moral reasons that all nations should be concerned for Africa. The fight against the climate crisis needs all hands on deck. The acute and chronic impacts of the climate crisis create problems such as poverty, infectious disease, forced migration, and conflict that spread through globalised systems. These knock-on impacts affect all nations. It is an interconnected world, leaving all countries at the mercy of environmental shocks, creating instability with severe consequences for all nations.

The climate crisis is a product of global inaction and comes at great cost not only to disproportionately impacted African countries but also to the whole world.  If for no other reason than that the crises in Africa will sooner rather than later spread and engulf all corners of the globe, we should all be concerned with the climate crises in Africa.

COP27 Climate Change Conference: urgent action needed for Africa and the world - The Lancet

The Hunger in South Sudan

 Hunger and malnutrition are on the rise across the flood, drought, and conflict-affected areas of South Sudan, with some communities likely to face starvation if humanitarian measures are not scaled-up, the United Nations warned.

Two-thirds of the South Sudanese population (7.76 million people) are likely to face acute food insecurity during the April-July 2023 lean season while 1.4 million children will be malnourished.

 The decline in food security and high prevalence of malnutrition is linked to a combination of conflict, poor macroeconomic conditions, extreme climate events, and spiralling costs of food and fuel. At the same time, there has been a decline in funding for humanitarian programmes despite the steady rise in humanitarian needs. The unprecedented, multi-year flood sweeping the country is exacerbating already high levels of hunger caused by ongoing conflict and the global food crisis. Central parts of the country, which are the most heavily impacted by multiyear flooding, are the areas with the highest levels of food insecurity.  All counties except one are showing a deterioration in their nutrition situation through June 2023, including 44 counties where the situation is deemed critical.

 Makena Walker, Acting Country Director for WFP in South Sudan, warned, "South Sudan is on the frontlines of the climate crisis and day in, day out families are losing their homes, cattle, fields and hope to extreme weather. Without humanitarian food assistance, millions more will find themselves in an increasingly dire situation and unable to provide even the most basic food for their families."

"Livelihood support is particularly needed to facilitate South Sudan's self-reliance in food production. We know the potential exists as about 840 000 tonnes of cereals were produced in 2021, during a difficult year with climate change, floods, conflict and other factors. With the current cereal deficit of 541 000 tonnes, urgent investment in rural livelihoods is needed to increase production and self-sufficiency," said Meshack Malo, FAO Representative in South Sudan.

"Over the past three years, floods have dramatically affected an increasing number of people across South Sudan," said UNICEF Acting Representative in South Sudan Jesper Moller. "Among those impacted, we find a growing number of food-insecure and malnourished children, which the international community cannot ignore..."

Resourcing for the 2023 humanitarian response in South Sudan is urgently needed within the next few months or agencies will be unable to preposition humanitarian assistance in time for the next year, leaving millions of families at risk of spiralling deeper into hunger.

Hunger and malnutrition being driven by climate crisis and conflict in South Sudan - South Sudan | ReliefWeb

South Africa's New Apartheid

 With one in three South Africans out of work, shanty towns are springing up around the city but the authorities are accused of criminalising poverty with evictions that echo apartheid laws.

A new Cape Town bylaw has been passed that criminalises the act of occupying public and private land, legitimising the authority’s behaviour. Civil society organisations and informal settlement residents say the law targets the poor, criminalises poverty, harks back to apartheid legislation and contravenes South Africa’s constitution. 

Under the bylaw, officials can dismantle a structure and impound the occupier’s possessions if it is on city land, or on any other land if the structure is “not yet capable of constituting a home”. It grants “authorised officials” the power to arrest without a warrant, impound building materials, and identify areas that could be unlawfully occupied. Those convicted face fines or up to two years’ imprisonment.

A new informal settlement known as “Covid” houses 87,000 people live in shacks of wood and corrugated iron. There is no running water or electricity – six people have died trying to connect their homes to the mains electricity supply. Toilets used to be an open hole in the ground until a child fell into one and drowned; now they are covered. Many residents struggle to feed themselves, and some living with chronic illnesses have died after skipping medication that needs to be taken with food. Yet the settlement is organised, and people have set up small businesses such as hair salons, shops and cafes. Many of the residents are former “back-yard dwellers” (people renting space on pockets of land around other’s homes) who were illegally evicted by landlords, or people whose income was shattered by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Jobs remain scarce, with one in three South Africans unemployed.

“We stay here because we have no choice,” says Luthando Mcuntula, on the settlement’s leadership committee. 

“This is apartheid,” says Mphithi, another committee member. “The majority here are black people. People who don’t have a place to stay are black people. You will never find a white person staying in these shacks. We stay here because we can’t do otherwise. I can’t pay rent because I’m not working. Our children are traumatised; they read about apartheid, but it’s happening now. It’s not nice to stay here but we don’t have any alternative.” 

According to Ndifuna Ukwazi, an activist organisation and law centre, the unlawful occupations bylaw “reflects an approach to informality that echoes the apartheid government’s displacement and forced removal of black and coloured people from urban centres”. It says the bylaw circumvents protections afforded to unlawful occupiers in the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998 (known as the “Pie act”), which sets out to prevent arbitrary evictions, and the South African constitution, which says no one can be evicted without a court order.

Mpho Raboeane, a lawyer for Ndifuna Ukwazi, says: “There are quite a few problems with the bylaw but paramount is the criminalisation of occupation which, given South Africa’s context and history, takes us back to apartheid-era thinking. Moreover, it is targeted at poor people and weaponises the use of legislation against them.”

‘This is apartheid’: Cape Town slum residents condemn forced removals | Cities and development | The Guardian

Glencore Corruption

Glencore pleaded guilty in June to five counts of bribery, and twoThe bribery was first detected by the FBI in 2017, and Glencore agreed in May to pay $1.1bn to US authorities for violations of bribery laws and commodity price manipulation. counts of failing to prevent bribery brought by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO). 

Glencore flew cash bribes to officials in Africa via private jet amid “endemic” corruption within the mining company.

Third-party agents used Glencore’s money to bribe officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan. The company played a “leading role in organised, planned, illegal activity” that was “authorised at a senior level”. A Glencore trader withdrew a total of €6.3m (£5.4m) in cash from the company’s cash desk in Baar, Switzerland, to fund bribes on 25 separate occasions between 2012 and 2015. Those withdrawals had to be signed off by senior employees, one of whom was a Glencore “business ethics officer” and the other who was a member of the company’s “business ethics committee”.

In South Sudan, Glencore officials travelled by private jet to the country shortly after its independence in 2011 with $800,000 in cash. That cash was falsely described as for “opening office in South Sudan, cash for office infrastructure, salaries, cars etc”, but was instead handed to agents who used it to bribe officials. “Within days of the arrival of the cash in Juba on 2 August 2011, Glencore’s fortunes changed” and it gained valuable contracts.

Mining giant Glencore flew cash bribes to Africa via private jet, UK court hears | Glencore | The Guardian

The Congo and Climate Change

 Peatlands span the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo and are the largest in the tropics. They cover 17m hectares (42m acres and store a vast amount of carbon – the equivalent of three years of global fossil fuel emissions.

The Congo peatlands are a huge carbon “timebomb” that could be triggered by the climate crisis, research has shown. 

“Our results indicate a positive feedback in the global carbon cycle – climate-induced drying in the central Congo basin leads to the release of further carbon from peat to the atmosphere,” the researchers concluded

The peatlands flipped from storing carbon to releasing it into the atmosphere when the climate became drier 5,000 years ago, the study showed, before returning to accumulating carbon 2,000 years ago.

“We know today that these peatlands are very close to that tipping point where they could release billions of tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere,” said Prof Simon Lewis, from the University of Leeds, UK, and University College London, and a senior author of the study. “We don’t know exactly how close but we do know that for the last couple of decades, droughts have been getting longer in the centre of the Congo basin. Our study brings a brutal warning from the past..."

Prof Corneille Ewango at the University of Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who led the expeditions to collect peat samples, said: “The peatlands are more vulnerable than we thought, and everyone must play their role in protecting them. Polluting countries must cut their carbon emissions fast.”

The Republic of the Congo’s environment minister, Arlette Soudan-Nonault, said: “It is more than ever essential that rich and polluting countries commit financially to the protection of our peatlands, our biodiversity and local populations. If we want to prevent this gigantic carbon store from turning into a timebomb, our partners must understand that this invaluable planetary ecosystem service cannot remain free forever.”

“The new study provides support for the Congo peatlands being vulnerable to climate drying,” said Prof Tim Lenton, at the University of Exeter and part of the team that undertook the September analysis. “For now, I would keep the Congo peatland and rainforest on the ‘uncertain’ and ‘slow’ list of potential tipping elements in the climate system, but it is clearly a vital carbon store and ecosystem that we should all seek to preserve.”

The research was published in the journal Nature and used cores taken through the peat layers to reconstruct the history of the peatlands. The ratio of hydrogen isotopes in the wax indicated how much rain was falling at the time the leaves grew. The work showed that drought caused the water table to drop, exposing peat to the air and decomposition.

Vanessa Nakate, a prominent climate justice activist from Uganda, said: “We are on the edge of climate disaster. The Congo basin is one of the most underappreciated resources the planet has. It is a hive for biodiversity and a huge carbon sink. We need to protect it.”

‘Carbon timebomb’: climate crisis threatens to destroy Congo peatlands | Greenhouse gas emissions | The Guardian

Food Insecurity in Southern Africa

 The Hunger threat is not only at the Horn of Africa and in the Sahel but is a growing risk in Southern African nations.

Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes are expected to become more widespread in areas of southern Madagascar, Malawi, and Mozambique, as well as areas of Angola, and much of Zimbabwe, due to compounding impacts of poor 2021/22 rainfall, tropical cyclones, and domestic economic declines starting in October. 

Food security outcomes are expected to be most severe in southwestern Madagascar, where Emergency (IPC Phase 4) outcomes are likely also starting in October. The population in need is likely to steadily increase through early 2023.

Conflict in northern Mozambique remains the primary driver of acute food insecurity with the disruption to livelihood activities. In Mozambique, Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces experienced an escalation of militia attacks in September. According to IOM, more than 15,400 people were displaced between late August and late September.

Food prices are increasing as more households rely on markets for food, especially in areas where production deficits were observed in 2022. This year, price increases are accelerated by high fuel prices linked to high global prices. Prices of maize grain are 70 to 180 percent above the five-year average in Malawi and up to 42 percent higher than the average in Mozambique. 

In Zimbabwe, food prices are expected to remain above the five-year average throughout the lean season.

 In Madagascar’s southern drought-affected areas, dried cassava prices are 67 percent higher than average. In most countries, inflation has also been increasing, likely triggering more price increases for food. Poor households in most deficit areas will continue struggling to access food commodities on the market due to weak purchasing power.

Southern Africa Key Message Update: Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes driven by weather shocks, conflict, and poor economies in early 2023, October 2022 - Madagascar | ReliefWeb

USA Invests in Africa's Fossil Fuels

 Seventeen of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change are found in Africa, with the continent requiring an infusion of funding to help it adapt to the economic and humanitarian challenge of repeated climate disasters. Africa is also home to about 60% of the most solar-rich environments in the world, according to the United Nations, although the west has so far been far less interested in harnessing the continent’s sun than its fossil fuels.

The US government has funneled more than $9bn (£7.7bn) into oil and gas projects in Africa since it signed up to restrain global heating in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a tally of official data shows, committing just $682m (£587m) to clean energy developments such as wind and solar over the same period.

Two-thirds of all the money the US has committed globally to fossil fuels in this time has been plowed into Africa, a continent rich in various minerals but also one in which 600 million people live without electricity and where floods, severe heatwaves and droughts are taking an increasingly devastating toll as the planet heats due to the combustion of coal, oil and gas. 

Last year, the Biden administration ordered a halt to investments in “carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy projects” globally, promising to usher in a new era of renewables. But sources close to the main agencies involved said that there was no plan as yet to adhere to the president’s goal, risking further greenhouse gas emissions.

 “I was thrilled with the promises from the Biden administration but over the last two years its been a slow walk back to the point where you couldn’t tell the difference between Biden and Trump on overseas fossil fuel finance,” said Kate DeAngelis, international finance program manager at Friends of the Earth.  She said, “It’s just business as usual. We are seeing some of the most vulnerable communities in Africa be negatively impacted and they don’t have a voice.”

The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Exim) is the official export credit agency of the US, established as an independent body and tasked with bolstering American jobs by facilitating exports through financing that private lenders are unwilling to provide. Over the past decade, the agency has propped up coal mining in South Africa, oil drilling in Nigeria and is now supporting a vast gas project in Mozambique as part of a mission to “increase American exports across the continent”, as Reta Jo Lewis, Exim’s president, put it in September.  Exim is bound by statute to not explicitly favor one sector, such as wind or solar, over another, such as oil or gas.

From 2016 until last year, Exim’s financing of fossil fuels in Africa dwarfed renewable funding by a factor of 51 to one. The billions of dollars in finance provided by Exim and the United States International Development Finance Corporation, which in the past five years has spent $3.4bn (£2.9bn) bankrolling fossil projects such as oil facilities Guinea and Senegal and a gas pipeline in Egypt.  In 2019, Exim made its biggest bet yet on gas, agreeing to provide a $4.7bn (£4bn) loan to finance a project in northern Mozambique overseen by Total, the French oil giant. Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world but the push to exploit its deep reserves of gas is only likely to enrich members of the country’s elite and do nothing to bring electricity to the 70% of people who do not have it.

Youba Sokona, a climate scientist from Mali who is a vice-chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),  said there was a “tremendous” opportunity to deploy solar-sourced electricity to shift communities away from practices such as cooking with charcoal but that such decisions were largely not being made by Africans themselves.

He explained, “Unfortunately this investment from the US is not feeding the development of Africa, it’s creating fossil fuels for export, this is the problem. The US isn’t investing for the interest of Africans, it’s investing for the interests of the US. 

Daniel Ribeiro, a campaign coordinator at Justiça Ambiental, a Mozambique environmental group pointed out, “It saddens me that the US continues to say pretty words but do bad things. Whenever there’s a conflict between making money and making a moral decision, we know what is going to win. That is where the US’s ability to produce beautiful narratives that hide the blood on their hands comes in. He added, “At least China doesn’t pretend that they are investing in Mozambique for any other reason than to make money. The US could at least be honest that this project will be terrible.”

Two-thirds of US money for fossil fuel pours into Africa despite climate goals | Cop27 | The Guardian

Miners and Zimbabwe Forests

Artisanal gold miners in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland Central Province have cut down thousands of trees to process gold ore.

In areas like Mazowe, forests have already fallen, thanks to the gold miners, and now the areas look like a mini deserts.

Forestry officials from the Zimbabwean government lament the constant loss of forests every year. According to the Forestry Commission here, this country loses 262,000 hectares of trees every year for different reasons.

Thirty percent of the forest is lost to illegal mining, says environmental activist, Monalisa Mafambirei.

“You speak of Mazowe as a case study, but, of course, this is not the only area losing trees to illegal gold miners. In fact, this problem facing our forests is widespread as gold miners are all over the country where gold is mined, and trees have continued to be the casualties as gold miners cut them down rather carelessly either for use when processing the gold ore or as they clear the land upon which they mine,” a government climate change said.

Environmental campaigners in this southern African country, like Gibson Mawere, blame the artisanal gold miners for fanning deforestation in the country.

“Illegal gold miners are unregulated, and they cut down trees, clearing areas on which they mine for gold, and also they use firewood to then process the gold ore because you should remember that these miners have no access to electricity nor coal to use in place of firewood.”

Gold miners like Makwati and his cousin place the blame on the country’s struggling economy.

“If we don’t cut the trees, we will have no money at the end of the day. We use fire from the trees we cut to process the gold ore before we sell pure gold. With formal jobs, we wouldn’t be harming the environment nor destroying trees,” Makwati, a miner explained.

Artisanal Miners Ruining Already Diminishing Forests in Zimbabwe | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Ending EACOP

 A new analysis released by a climate research firm,  the Climate Accountability Institute (CAI),  reveals environmental assessments used to gain approval for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Uganda and Tanzania failed to fully consider the massive amount of fossil fuel emissions that will result from the project.

Climate campaigners have opposed the project which has already displaced thousands of people and threatens the livelihoods of millions, however, the CAI looked at expected emissions from tanker transport from Port Tanga in Tanzania through the Suez Canal to Rotterdam (and return), refining of the waxy crude oil into petroleum products, and end-use consumption of the carbon fuels," and found that EACOP will be directly linked to 379 million tonnes of carbon emissions—more than 25 times the current annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania. The earlier analysis that was accepted by the host governments detailed just 1.8% of the project's total emissions.

CAI's findings qualify EACOP as a "mid-sized carbon bomb," as Richard Heede, who leads the group's Carbon Majors project, described it. A carbon bomb is defined as an extraction project which has the capacity to emit at least one billion tonnes of carbon.

"It is time for TotalEnergies to abandon the monstrous EACOP that promises to worsen the climate crisis, waste billions of dollars that could be used for good, [and] bring mayhem to human settlements and wildlife along the pipeline's path," Heede explained.

The French oil company TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) are behind the project, with Total planning to invest between $3.5 billion and $5 billion in the pipeline.

"EACOP is an ill-advised project whose impact on communities in Uganda and Tanzania, wildlife, and the planet will be devastating, as the project's lead Total Energies stand to gain," said Omar Elmawi, coordinator for the Stop EACOP campaign.

350Africa.org and the Stop EACOP coalition are preparing to release a new documentary film, EACOP: A Crude Reality, which features the stories of climate campaigners who are fighting against the project and some of the thousands of people who have been evicted or economically displaced because of the pipeline.

The stories within the film "are a testament to the impunity with which fossil fuel corporations such as Total Energies operate, as they realize huge profits at the expense of people and the environment," said Hilda Nakabuye, a climate campaigner in Uganda. "Harmful projects such as EACOP should have no place in the future of the continent," she added.

Data Reveals Major Africa Pipeline as Climate Killer (commondreams.org)

Turkey Joins the Scramble for Africa

 Sales of weapons to African nations are booming after Turkey signed military cooperation deals with dozens of governments on the continent. Turkey's defence and aerospace exports to the continent grew more than fivefold, to $460.6 million, in 2021 — up from $82.9 million in 2020. Albeit, Turkey's share of Africa's arms market is still tiny at 0.5%. But the rapid growth of defense sales is "striking," according to a 2022 study on Turkey's security diplomacy in Africa

Turkey is stepping up its security footprint in Africa after over a decade of strategically expanding its economic and cultural influence on the continent. Turkey is proving a reliable alternative to traditional arms exporters, such as Russia, China, France and the United States. For Turkey, Africa is potentially huge market for Ankara's emerging defense and aerospace industry, which boasted some 1,500 companies in 2020 compared to just 56 in 2002.

Abel Abate Demissie, an associate fellow at the British think tank Chatham House, explained, Turkish arms are relatively cheap, have shorter delivery times and come free of "bureaucratic hurdles" such as political or human rights conditions

"In Africa, wherever we went, they asked us for unarmed and armed drones," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after returning from a 2021 trip to the continent. Erdogan, who has visited more African countries than any non-African leader, has even redefined Turkey as an "Afro-Eurasian state," Eguegu pointed out. "By connecting its identity with Africa, it's a way to make itself almost a neutral partner of African countries."

African nations that have already taken delivery of Turkish-manufactured drones include Somalia, Togo, Niger, Nigeria and Ethiopia — although the drone sales to Ethiopia have attracted Western criticism after the government used them to attack civilians in the Tigray conflict. 

Turkey has signed military-related pacts with the majority of African countries, mainly in West and East Africa (as shown in the map below). While the deals vary in scope, they can include technical visits to research centers, personnel exchanges between institutions and companies, and training.

 In Somalia,Turkey operates its biggest foreign base, Camp TURKSOM where the Turkish government has boasted of training a third of Somalia's 15,000-strong army in the fight against al-Shabab. Turkey has been training Kenyan police officers since 2020. Turkey gave the G5 Sahel Joint Force (made up of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) a $5 million contribution for the fight against terrorism in 2018. It has since signed military cooperation and defense agreements with Niger, Nigeria, Togo and Senegal. 

The 2021 Turkey-Africa summit attracted 16 African heads of state and more than 100 ministers. This shows that the continent is increasingly attaching strategic importance to Turkey, said Senegal-based peace and security analyst Aissatou Kante, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, an African think tank.

Turkey deepens its defense diplomacy in Africa – DW – 10/28/2022