Newly discovered oil and gas reserves in Central and Western Africa are driving energy expansion hugely detrimental to the planet and the region’s environment and economy. Central Africa’s Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Equatorial Guinea, have significant oil reserves while the new discoveries in Senegal, Mauritania, and Côte d’Ivoire are also notable. As expected, transnational oil and gas companies raced and are still vying to get the lucrative contracts from governments that intends to use their newly discovered assets to generate revenues. They see these resources as means to catapult their countries to prosperity.

This is not a new story. Energy sources present a strategic role to countries where they are found. After all, energy is the heart of the economy and give states a powerful role in the international order. It is a key means of production and reproduction in the world division of labour. On the community level and local perspectives, the governments’ message about the promises of rich discoveries give hope that perhaps the problem of low energy access and poverty could be addressed. After all, more than 600 million people in Africa lack access to electricity while more than 80% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to clean cooking technologies – a basic need of everyday life.

A critical view of the history of oil and gas in Africa, however, give many reasons why the current drive to develop and expand oil and gas projects in the region is wrong and may not necessarily produce the anticipated affluence. Here are some:

Fossil fuels oil and gas are the main driver of climate change and biodiversity loss

It is generally concluded and accepted that oil and gas significantly contribute to climate change as their combustion is the largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, driving both global warming and climate change. Climate change presents an existential threat to humanity, and already a harsh reality in Africa. According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Africa is already warming faster than other regions and is experiencing far severe impacts of climate change like increasing number and more severe cyclones, floods longer droughts and extreme heat among others.

Climate change also exacts economic burdens as African countries are now losing 2–5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and many are diverting up to 9 percent of their budgets responding to climate extremes. The current expansion of oil and gas infrastructures present direct threats to Africa’s ecosystems and biodiversity, which also affects people’s livelihoods and more importantly the capacity to produce food and sustain life.

Oil Companies merely ship oil to the Global North

We have seen Nigeria’s many lessons of seven decades of oil extraction and continuing energy and economic poverty. Despite the country’s status as the ninth-largest oil exporter in the world, only 61% of the Nigerian population have access to electricity. The remaining significant portion of the population is without access, particularly in rural areas.

Big Oil multinationals time and time again have shown very little interest in investing to provide energy for Africans. They often prioritize exporting resources to Western markets rather than investing in domestic energy infrastructure to serve African populations. The extracted oil and gas end up in Europe, leaving many Africans without access to electricity.

There are cheaper and better sources of energy

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is clear about the fact that to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C, the priority and strategic concern is to change the global energy source. By 2030, 80% of global primary energy demand must come from renewables and all fossil fuel sources phased out by 2050. Phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with alternative energy source has geopolitical significance. It is indeed more advantageous to develop renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and small hydro power.  They are environmentally friendlier, produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and can be more cost-effective in the long run. Renewable energy sources are also less likely to cause environmental disasters like oil spills or gas fires. Renewable energy from solar and wind also have the potential to exceed current global energy demand 100 times over.

While the initial investment in constructing renewable energy infrastructure can be significant, the long-term operating costs are often lower than those of fossil fuel power plants, as renewable energy sources have a predictable cost structure. This, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) makes renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels like oil and gas. That trend could strengthen the transition away from fossil fuels over the next decade and lead for global markets for oil and gas to shrink. If that happens, the African governments’ dream could turn into a nightmare of stranded assets.

To save Africa and the planet, Africans need to resist the debt-fossil fuel trap

It is indeed a great risk if investments in new oil and gas fields, pipelines, or infrastructure become worthless if the demand for fossil fuels continue to fall due to climate action, consumer preference or national policies of renewable energy adoption. A related significant challenge, which is also not new, is the continuation of the region’s entrapment in a debt cycle fuelled by fossil fuel production. African countries incur excessive loans to finance energy projects, then become heavily reliant on fossil fuels for revenue. However, the revenues do not go to people’s needs, they instead merely go to repay the debts.

The foreseen economic benefits therefore are far outweighed by long-term consequences that many in the climate justice movement already know – environmental harm, unsustainable debt, and potential for stranded assets. Many countries in Africa are spending more on external debt payments than on healthcare, education, or even climate action. The system, institutionalised through the COP by continued denial of commensurate climate finance and loan pushing is the same system of neoliberal financial relations.

Building our ecofeminist and anti-capitalist movements to resist oil and gas

In every space that can be accessed and engaged in, ecofeminists argue and educate about the intrinsic link between capitalist exploitation of natural resources and patriarchy. Both are based on the same dynamics of domination and exploitation of women and nature. There is a materialist basis for feminist resistance against oil and gas extraction, which subordinates women through the destruction of nature from which they depend on for the needs of family and livelihood.

African women are building their movements from which many more can understand how the oil and gas industries specifically endanger women’s health and well-being as fossil fuel-affected air, water, and soil pollution impact women’s fertility, mental health, and daily work and responsibilities. In the recent Regional Strategy Meeting on Oil and Gas co-organised by WoMin with the newly established Senegal Working Group on Oil and Gas held in Senegal last May, women community leaders from various regions in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Republic of Congo expressed their worries about the impacts of new energy projects to their environment and livelihoods. They want their rights as communities to be recognised, and their jobs be sustained. They demand actual impacts of the projects to their lives and livelihoods be recognised and compensated.

All over the world, women climate justice activists and land defenders are on the frontlines of resisting oil and gas extraction and identify the struggle as a critical place of resistance for climate justice. The connection between the fossil fuel sites and sexual violence, as well as rampant human rights violations against indigenous and marginalised groups are well documented. African women are deepening their knowledge about the inextricable link between oil and gas expansion and capitalist expansion that produced climate breakdown. There is continuing need to sharpen skills and arguments, build strategies and movements, and connect the resistance in different parts of Africa. We need to build more spaces for regional exchanges, info-sharing and learning to strengthen local and national struggles from which to build alternatives.