ALEX LENFERNA: Snake oil and gas salesmen are trying to sell off the continent

The African Energy Week conference that kicked off in Cape Town on Monday will see a flurry of coal, oil and gas lobbyists, executives and fossil fuel-friendly government officials gather, supposedly in the name of “making energy poverty history by 2030”.

In reality, it seems to be more about extracting the resources of Africa for foreign fossil fuel interests while leaving behind those it claims to care about.

On a continent where energy poverty still besets hundreds of millions of people, what could be more noble than a conference seemingly dedicated to ending energy poverty? Africa Energy Week claims it will be just that. Yet if we look past the slick public relations slogans and big oil propaganda we see a darker truth.

The first sign that African Energy Week is not what it appears comes from the murky history of its chair, NJ Ayuk ("‘Friend or fraud?’ Mystery man behind energy indaba”, Sunday Times October 8). It has been widely reported that Ayuk is a convicted fraudster and money launderer who was even extradited from the US, a charge he denies. Either way, it seems he has now turned his skills to duping Africa on behalf of oil and gas corporations.

The ruse Ayuk is trying to sell is that handing over our continent to rapacious, polluting and harmful corporations will somehow result in its development and make it flourish. Ayuk’s spin forms part of a huge, well-funded PR campaign to cloak the naked profiteering of the fossil fuel industry in the garb of caring for the “poor people” of Africa.

To help see how false African Energy Week’s claims to be acting in Africa’s interests are, we can examine who they chose as its leading voices. One of the keynote speakers is Alex Epstein, a renowned US fossil fuel lobbyist, right-wing zealot and climate denier. Announcing Epstein’s talk, Ayuk praised him for pushing coal, oil and gas as the cure to Africa’s development, and for denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that fossil fuels cause climate change.

What Ayuk didn’t mention was what US sociology professor Robert Brulle calls Epstein’s “colonialist attitude”. Epstein has written and defended articles claiming “the superiority of the West”, and that African cultures are “inferior”. He has also argued that homeless people and those who rely on welfare are “worse than useless”. Truly a champion of the poor. 

Epstein has also written disinformation-filled books on the moral case for fossil fuels. In them, he argues that the key to tackling poverty is fossil fuels. Sounding like a US version of SA mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, Epstein argues that the “blind, anti-development hostility and hysteria” of environmentalists is strangling the development of the poor by constraining fossil fuels.

If fossil fuels truly uplifted Africa’s poor, Nigeria, which has extracted more oil and gas than any other country in Africa, would surely have eliminated poverty. Instead, more than 40% of the population is living in energy poverty.

Likewise SA, Africa’s biggest coal producer and consumer, would be a flourishing and prosperous nation. Instead, despite being one of the world’s biggest coal polluters, it is home to some of the world’s highest inequality and unemployment levels, with more than 50% of the population in energy poverty.  

Claims that fossil fuels are the key to tackling energy poverty are also undermined by the overwhelming volume of evidence that renewable energy is the cheapest, most effective and cleanest way to tackle energy poverty. For example, a recent study found that unlike fossil fuels, investing in distributed renewable energy systems could actually end energy poverty in Africa and Asia by 2030, supposedly the aim of African Energy Week.

Not only would renewables better address energy poverty. They would also reduce billions of tonnes of climate pollution, create 25-million energy jobs, and hundreds of millions more in other industries. That’s 30 times the number of energy jobs that would be created by a comparable investment in fossil fuels.

The racecard

Another Mantashe-esque strategy Epstein has used is to claim that those advocating for clean energy and climate justice are racists. Firstly, we probably shouldn’t take advice on racism from someone with a “colonialist attitude”, who denigrates African culture and has advocated to cancel public holidays commemorating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior

Secondly, studies show that the jobs and benefits from the oil and gas industry disproportionately go to white workers, whereas the harms of pollution fall predominantly on poor, black communities. This is a trend seen about the world. Meanwhile, opposition to clean energy technologies such as wind farms are driven predominantly by rich white men like Epstein.  

It is also rich, conservative white men like Epstein who are most likely to deny climate change. Epstein’s particularly awful brand of climate denial argues that climate change is a good thing, as the world is too cold and so getting warmer would be better for us. Epstein should tell that to the hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia whose homelands could become uninhabitable due to extreme heat driven by the climate crisis.

Ignoring the overwhelming evidence that climate change is one of the greatest threats to poverty alleviation and development is key to peddling fossil fuels. The climate science is clear: to avoid catastrophe we must urgently move away from fossil fuels. We must stop new investment in coal, oil and gas, not ramp it up as Ayuk and Epstein propose. 

In the end, the scramble for Africa’s fossil fuel resources is not just a scheme perpetuated by a few outlandish individuals like Epstein and Ayuk. It is a continent-wide heist that is being driven by rapacious, multinational fossil fuel corporations like Shell and Total, which have a long and violent colonial history on the continent.

Let us not be duped once again by their false pretences to care about Africa’s people, or their pernicious promises to deliver development. Let us remember their violent, exploitive and toxic legacies, which have perpetuated vast injustices across our continent. After all, this is not the first time Africa has been told that its subjugation is actually in its own interests.

It is time for the people of Africa to reject the false prophets of fossil fuelled prosperity. Instead, we must claim our own, home-grown, African clean energy future. One that truly delivers on the promise of energy, prosperity and a good life for all.

• Dr Lenferna, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Nelson Mandela University department of development studies, is general secretary of the SA Climate Justice Coalition.