By Vijay Jayaraj

European colonialism that methodically extracted wealth from Africa until the system’s collapse in the last century has been replaced by a climate colonialism that stifles the economic development that the Dark Continent desperately needs.

A highly political climate industrial complex enables Western governments and international bodies like the United Nations to exert soft power over poorer countries’ energy policies. Advancing a so-called green agenda in the name of saving humanity from a fabricated climate emergency and offering seemingly irresistible handouts of money and technology, the colonists insist on replacing fossil fuels with unreliable and expensive wind and solar energy.

Yet, the relatively high mortality and morbidity of Africans – among the world’s poorest – can only be relieved by the energy of irrationally demonized coal, oil and natural gas. This artificially induced energy gap is the difference between life and death, hope and despair. It’s a pernicious intrusion in energy markets that shortens lifespans, snuffs out newborn cries and erects barriers to progress.

Energy Poverty in Africa

In 2024, it is unconscionable that over 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 28% of healthcare facilities have reliable electricity. More than 900 million people cook with traditional biomass like wood and animal dung, inhaling toxic fumes that claim over 600,000 African lives each year. Clean water remains a luxury for vast swaths of the population.

As has been shown in parts of Asia, these problems can be alleviated over time with robust investment in fossil fuels. Coal and natural gas can provide affordable and reliable electricity, and natural gas can immediately reduce deaths from the pollution of dirty cooking fuels.

Consider that a single electric car charging overnight in Europe consumes as much power as an entire African village uses in a week. Such stark disparities are not mere numbers. They represent battle lines in the daily struggle for survival of Africa’s impoverished.

In this light – or rather, darkness –nations find themselves ensnared in a global madness, their potential extinguished like fire without oxygen, smothered by the very lack of what’s needed to fuel their ascent.

Foreign-funded anti-fossil fuel activism, cloaked in the language of climate alarmism, blocks pathways to development that Western nations themselves traversed in their journey to prosperity.

The Shifting Tides of Development Funding

For decades, international financial institutions and Western donors viewed energy access as a cornerstone of African development. Many of these projects leveraged Africa’s abundant fossil fuel resources. But things have changed.

The African Development Bank announced in 2019 that it would no longer finance coal projects. In 2021, it went further and placed severe restrictions on oil and gas investments. The World Bank followed suit.

Now, even domestic efforts of Africans to rejuvenate their oil and gas sector are being opposed by paid activists from Europe. There was heavy opposition to the Africa Energy Week event in South Africa, with European-funded protesters appearing at the African Energy Chamber’s Johannesburg offices.

“Some of the protesters … from the poorest townships didn’t even know why they were there, having been promised only $5 and a meal for their participation,” said NJ Ayuk, the Chamber’s executive chairman. “Africans deserve better than to be used for foreign agendas.

“Unfortunately, climate panic and fearmongering are alive and well, and the target is Africa. The way we see it, the world’s green agenda ignores Africa—or at least, it dismisses our unique needs, priorities and challenges,” says Ayuk.

Africa’s Growth Should Be Nurtured, Not Disrupted

As they hinder African development to purportedly save the planet, Western activists are increasing the continent’s vulnerability to nature’s elements. It is a well-established fact that wealthier societies are far more resilient to environmental shocks and natural disasters like drought and pestilence.

The challenges facing Africa are immense but not insurmountable. The right policies and investments can achieve universal energy access, drive economic growth, and build prosperous societies.

But all this will remain out of reach as long as “green” policies continue to obstruct sensible energy development. An ill-informed and myopic crusade threatens to entomb African aspirations in the very darkness the crusaders claim to be dispelling.

Echoing across both sunbaked lands and misty forests is the question of whether Africans will be permitted to flick the switch of progress or be confined to the shadows of others’ destructive obsession.

As a leader of the resistance to the new colonialism, Mr. Ayuk says, “Africans must produce every drop of hydrocarbons we can find to better lives of its people and meet global energy security needs.”

He is quite right.

This commentary was first published at The Washington Times on October 16, 2024.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition in Arlington Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University (both in the U.K.), and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.