By Vijay Jayaraj
African priorities differ from those of Europe and North America. Among the Dark Continent’s most daunting challenges are poverty, malnutrition, lack of healthcare and proper education, unemployment, inferior transportation infrastructure and underdeveloped technologies for energy, information and communications.
Therefore, Africans do not have the option to adopt unscientific and unachievable climate policies that address none of these issues in a serious way.
Nations on Africa’s vast continent are increasingly relying on their abundant natural resources to drive economic development. Oil and gas deposits have distinguished themselves as significant drivers of economies in several African countries.
Economic power of oil and gas
The pursuit of fossil fuel extraction is motivated by a clear economic imperative. Oil and gas production has proven to be a reliable avenue to attaining these nations’ aims of fostering industrialization, reducing poverty and raising living standards.
Globally, oil and gas exports are often major contributors to a country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Present day examples include the U.S., Russia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, all of which export vast amounts of hydrocarbons.
Success stories in Africa
Several African countries stand out as examples of the economic benefits generated from the exploitation of fossil fuels. These nations have leveraged their natural resources to propel their economies ahead, resulting in impressive growth and development.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and exporter, with resulting revenues contributing significantly to projects such as construction of roads and power plants, to social services and to overall GDP. Despite problems with corruption and incompetence, Nigeria’s oil wealth has had a significant economic impact.
In Angola, oil and gas account for more than 90 percent of all exports. Crude oil exports generated nearly $40 billion in revenue in 2022, an increase of 44% from 2021. With continued progress in production and licencing, Angola aims to achieve a daily output of 1.3 million barrels in the next three years. The country’s adoption of legal provisions for oil and gas production is seen as an example for other developing oil economies in Africa.
Europe offers new market for African oil and gas
African countries now have a promising market in Europe, where governments are looking for more of the continent’s imports to compensate for loss of Russian supplies.
On September 27, amid reports of a German energy crisis and with power-starved industries facing permanent closure, the Italian government began negotiations with the German state of Bavaria to supply natural gas from Africa. Italy believes it can serve as an entry point for African energy to some European countries.
Speaking to Reuters, a former CEO of German business lobby BDI, said, “Germany is organising liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and other solutions in the north, but it is not possible to rule out delays or blocks to the infrastructure … This is the reason why southern federal states in Germany want a ‘plan B’ to be safe.”
Algeria, Libya, Egypt and eastern Mediterranean regions have been the largest contributors of oil and gas flow into Europe. Now, more countries in Africa are joining the race to feed the emerging European market.
Under construction for the past two decades, the $13 billion Trans-Saharan gas pipeline stretches 2,565 miles from Warri in southern Nigeria via Niger to Algeria’s Hassi R’Mel gas center. The pipeline would make it possible for Niger to profit from recoverable gas reserves estimated to be about 34 billion cubic meters.
The economic benefits of fossil fuel production are obvious and badly needed. Western leaders must acknowledge them and abandon efforts to force vacuous climate policies on African populations whose rewards of modernity are overdue.
This commentary was first published at Daily Caller on November 4, 2023.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK.
Dear Vijay Jayaraj,
While you say:
However, leveraged through the UN, the greatest problem facing failed or near-failed states is corruption by their own elites.
Elites rob the poor or keep them poor, so they can beg from the rich.
Yours sincerely,
Bill Johnston
You are right to a point, that point being tribalism, the elites are generally from one tribe and the rest from others. The others become restless, a coup results and the country goes further down the trail to corruption and dictatorship. Tribalism is beginning to affect the US, a feature of the two party system, and it does not bode well for that nation.
The Internet helps them organize.
The problem is that, in Africa, tribalism morphs naturally into socialism. In both cases the tribal/political elite rules and everybody else obeys. Socialism has been an utterly catastrophic failure in Africa – reducing the level of development to below that prevailing pre-independence in many countries. The sorry tale of Rhodesia’s descent into Zimbabwean socialism is just one stark example.
The US looks like it is progressively disintegrating except they are doing it the other way round: capitalist prosperity to socialist decay to tribal oligarchy. There’s still a chance that African countries can climb out of the pit if they can deal with corruption and incompetence. (?) If they do, they will watch the US slide into the pit from which they have just escaped.
Excellent, something good to come out of all this nonsense at least.
Crazy times, although thinking about the just stop oil luvvies heads spinning at this makes it worth every word.
…..100 eco-warriors stormed Whitehall and invaded the Cenotaph. What the war memorial has to do with climate change is lost on Guido…
At the same time, two JSO protesters were arrested for vandalising a painting in the National Gallery, which the group proudly noted was the same painting that the Suffragettes smashed in 1914. Not sure their agenda is quite the same as fighting for women’s rights…
https://order-order.com/2023/11/06/just-stop-oil-protestors-arrested-after-targeting-the-cenotaph/
“”Africa Doesn’t Need Western Elites’ Meaningless Climate Policies””
And neither do we.
The People of Africa should NOT listen to Western Elite Climate Alarmists.
The path forward for Africa is obvious, take it.
And the good news is the People of Africa are not listening to the Western Elite Climate Alarmists.
The Western Elite Climate Alarmists are in the process of destroying their own economies and societies trying to eliminate CO2. Don’t let them destroy your nations, too, over a CO2 crisis that doesn’t really exist.
Development of Africa’s oil, gas and coal resources is essential. This should be aided by the West with generous partnership deals (eg Rio Tinto’s copper deal with Mongolia) . Otherwise China will step in with deals favorable only to the Chinese Communist Party.
Of course global warming up ,down or sideways is not and never has been dependent on CO2 emissions
Yes, and nobody can say differently at this time.
There is no evidence CO2 is doing what Climate Alarmists claim it is doing.
Story Tip
Not just accelerating, it’s exponential increases now.
“Exponential increases in high-temperature extremes in North America”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-41347-3
Just another RCP 8.5/GCM scare piece.
Since when was the output of a computer model considered to be real data?
Nature was once a serious, respectable journal. Not any more, alas.
What Africa needs, experiments on schoolchildren there have been done to confirm this, Africa needs Livestock Farms and lots of them.
iow. Africa needs to get some proper food into its people (children especially) then the whole shebang will sort itself out inside the next and succeeding generations. ##
The insane and haha delicious thing is that livestock farms work to capture Carbon.
Not as if Carbon is any issue, it is the water which attaches to the Carbon (hydrogels???) that really matters and is what controls the weather.
## The exact same thing applies in The West – yet sugar-induced drunkenness/dementia means we are doing the exact opposite. ‘Things’ have never been worse and are sliding away rapidly, as per the Trump witch-burning, TrainWreck UK, Ukraine and now Israel
Yes- you did elect the right guy last time – Joseph Biden really is the creme-de-le-creme of Western politics/science/education/diplomatic & social skill.
Elect him another time and Africa will be rushing to your aid.
If we are going to be in any state to ‘guide/pull Africa out of a hole‘ -we have to be sure we ourselves are not in that exact same hole. Presently, we are not.
And THAT is The Health Crisis that should be being addressed.
Sort that out and Climate will sort itself
Zimbabwe, when it was Rhodesia, was not only was able to feed its own people but provide food for millions of its neighbours. Now it requires food aid for millions of its own people thanks to its Marxist leaders and their ideology. To make matters worse our Western academics and students want to abandon the free market, adopt a new Marxism and promote climate lunacy. This is sure to turn out well for Africa that depends on Western technology and markets, foreign aid as well as the huge sums of money sent home from African expats (20 million?).
I’m a South African and I agree with the views expressed by Vijay Jayaraj.
I also agree with Bill Johnson’s comment. Corruption and incompetence perpetuated through the ‘deployment’ of supporters of ruling elites to political, economic and social centres of power ensures that investment and foreign aid is routed into the hands of the party.
The “Renewable Energy” scam pushed on Africa by both external and internal government agencies and private sector opportunists is, in any case, utterly ridiculous. An unworkable solution to a non-existent problem.
Ignore it. Use coal, oil, gas and nuclear.
More importantly, get rid of the mass of regulation, corruption and incompetence that makes any sort of rational development impossible and keeps Africa on its knees while the elites grow fat on international “development” funding.
The huge gas find off the Namibian coast just north of South Africa offers a huge cheap source of energy that will produce less CO2 and far less polution than oil does. An intelligent engineer and scientist will know this would be a good and reliable transition until we have mature technologies that allow us in the more distant future to use renewables economically. Africa has other similar unexplored reserves like this.
I’m delighted that there has been a huge gas find off the Namibian coast. I hope they, and SA, find heaps more gas, oil or coal. Gas is a great source of energy but I can’t see why you are worried about CO2 in the first place. It is the single most important fertilizer for all growing plants. It is not responsible for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (aka Climate Change). Good engineers and scientists (and policy makers) don’t try to fix problems that don’t exist. If you really are worried about CO2, advocate for nuclear power which produces no CO2 at all. SA was one of the first countries in the world to develop years ago nuclear technologies appropriate for Africa – small modular pebble-bed reactors, for example. Forget about ‘renewable’ wind and solar – as I said, its an incredibly expensive unworkable solution to a non-existent problem. We should use whatever we have right now to provide the cheap and reliable energy needed to drive Africa’s development.
You covered most of Michael’s insipidity well, but missed calling BS on his “more distant future to use renewables economically”. THERE WILL NEVER be a time when ruinables will become economical for anything but specific small remote uses such as powering highway cameras and weather stations of pumps to fill storage tanks for livestock or for off grid residences.
Michael needs to read MORE here at WUWT to gain true understanding and clear his mind of the brainwashing he apparently has been subjected to elsewhere.
A tiny fraction of the resources squandered on Ruinable Energy could have financed an Africa-wide Electrical Grid and clean water for every inhabitant.
Well, I’m sure you know the saying ‘foreign aid is the transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries’? It would be more honest and socially helpful to pay all development aid tax-free directly into the bank accounts of cabinet ministers and the bureaucratic elites on condition they only ever go to ‘work’ to repeal idiotic laws and regulations. Then everybody would be happy; the progressive intellectuals, the caring foreign givers, the recipients and, most of all, the rest of us.
While Vijay Jayaraj spells out Africa’s priorities – or rather what should be their priorities – he leaves out three important problems: crime, corruption and cronyism. African governments do not prioritize tackling these because they would be undermining themselves.
The priorities should not be described as “challenges” These are something a athelete faces when seeking to beat a record. These should be called what they really are namely problems or difficulties.
Maybe the problem that is bigger than “Western Elites” for Nigeria is that they are all in for the China Belt and Road Initiative. Sure, the Western Elites have no business forcing policy on Nigeria, but all in for BRI is not the road to economic success.
Western Elites push these developing nations into the Chicom Camp. The Chicoms aren’t telling Africans they must build windmills and solar and can’t use coal, oil or natural gas.
Yep. For decades western environmental and other NGOs as well as government and international development institutions have largely opposed any large scale energy and resource development (dams, mines,oil and gas resources etc) in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. The West essentially withdrew from large scale infrastructure development and China stepped into the vacuum.
A completely accurate description of the situation. Currently, the US, EU, W Bank and IMF won’t lend so much as a cent for fossil fuel energy. Instead they bribe African elites (government and private sector) with stupendous amounts of cash to build huge wind and solar plants which we all know will never power national economic and social development. On the other hand, if the Chinese build a coal plant, or develop a gas field, or whatever, we at least actually do land up with a reliable source of energy. Which option would you chose?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/27/rich-countries-fossil-fuels-africa-renewables-gas-climate
The people of African nations need to tell all these white, elitist jackasses to shut the hell up and go the hell away. Then make them do so.
But then where would all that western money come from? All that money rolling in from governments and industries into the pockets of the powerful elites.
A lot of African countries have already been destroyed by white elitist jackasses; Marx and Lenin for starters. The current wave comes from the West.
And they are rooted in the same sick assed leftist ideology.
I see the problem in Africa as inheriting socialist or at least European statist resource titles. As the national government “owns” all the oil, coal, and other minerals, the actual people have no direct interest in development.
Corrupting one authority is simpler than dealing with local landowners as a group, and there is no local pushback for bad deals. I would favor a Madisonian view that as self interest is always present, take advantage of it.
I hope that climate hypocrisy has reached its peak with Just Stop Oil – surely it can not get any worse.
Climate Colonialism?
Clearly, the author does not grasp the role of the enlightened to save Africans from the kinds of material progress that have made Americans bad people.
American politics are driving the USA back to the 1800’s!
What if we went back to a fossil-free society like the 1800’s? Life was short without the energy and products made from fossil fuel derivatives and without transportation systems fueled by fossil fuels.
Life in a fossil fuel free society was simple without hospitals, electronics, communications, cars, airports, cruise ships, building climate control, and a space program!
https://www.cfact.org/2023/11/04/what-if-we-went-back-to-a-fossil-free-society-like-the-1800s/
What 1800s are you talking about? The 1800s (i.e. from 1800 to 1899) were a time of massive, rapid increases in transportation (railways, steamships), communications (electric telegraph, trans-ocean telegraph cables), industrialisation, health care (anaesthetics, antiseptics) food production, quality of life (e.g. gas lighting, electric lighting), energy use (development of oil, invention of electricity generation and electric motors, and don’t forget the internal combustion engine), mineral production (advanced metallurgy) none of which would have been possible without cheap and abundant coal.
The twentieth century (which is starting to look pretty good in hindsight, if you ignore the totalitarian politics, the industrial-scale killing and the awful wars they led to) was built on the back of the nineteenth century, which was in turn built on the back of the eighteenth century which saw the invention of iron smelting with coke, and the steam engine (which was powering factories by the 1770s). Which was in turn…
In fact there’s been 700 or so years of continual progress in human wealth, health and material comfort, which grew out of information technology (remember Gutenberg?), scientific research and political environments that recognised the rights of individuals. It took place almost entirely in western Europe, which is something we should be proud of, and it got exported to other places that were receptive to progress (like America). And it really took off in 1712 with the first functioning steam engine.
Now our elites are telling us that progress was bad, and we need to start regressing. Individual liberty is slowly being replaced by authoritarian collectivism and material well-being is going to be made “sustainable”. And the poor people of Africa are being told that they can skip the intervening industrial era and go back to being happy, smiling peasants scratching a living in their Arcadian paradise, where disease, ignorance, malnutrition and grinding poverty will keep them safe from the scourge of industrial development. They can have a few solar panels and they can rejoice in the knowledge that they are indeed saving the planet.
Africa is not alone, none of us need Western elites’ meaningless climate politics. It is all lies, enough is enough.
Story tip: CNN claims African Elephants are dropping dead due to climate change, even though its due to a bacterium.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-finally-solved-mystery-african-160857599.html