Fossil fuel expansion threatens Africa’s climate action, public welfare — CAPPA

The Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa and the Africa Make Big Polluters Pay Coalition have warned that fossil fuel expansion and corporate influence could undermine Africa’s climate commitments and leave vulnerable communities bearing the costs of the energy transition.

The organisations raised the concerns on Tuesday at the Hybrid Launch and Media Presentation of the Energy Transition Plan and Five-Country Nationally Determined Contributions as governments, negotiators and civil society organisations gather at the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference in Antalya, Türkiye.

The two reports titled “Four Years On: Examining Nigeria’s Just Transition Plan and Nationally Determined Contributions in Africa: A Five-Country Analysis” assessed climate pledges and the policies, financing and social protections needed to implement them in Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Togo and Uganda.

In his opening remarks, CAPPA’s Executive Director, Akinbode Oluwafemi, said Africa contributed relatively little to the historical emissions driving climate change but continued to experience a disproportionate share of its effects, including floods, extreme heat and drought.

He said Nigeria’s climate ambitions were being weakened by continued dependence on oil and gas, inadequate social protections and financing arrangements that could deepen national debt.

He warned that corporate interests could profit from climate policies while communities faced environmental damage and loss of livelihoods.

“The Nigeria Energy Transition Plan and the Five-Country NDCs Reports offer an opportunity to rethink how energy policies and climate commitments serve people and communities. These reports emphasise that equity, transparency and accountability must remain central in every plan, while ensuring that affected communities have a meaningful voice in decisions that shape their future,” Oluwafemi said.

Presenting the findings, CAPPA’s Assistant Executive Director, Zikorah Ibeh, said the reports recognised progress in policy development and renewable energy deployment but found that such progress had not displaced the economic structures sustaining fossil fuel dependence.

“Our assessment recognises progress in policy development and renewable energy deployment but finds that cleaner energy is being layered onto an economy still heavily focused on oil and gas, without sufficient change in the institutions and revenue systems that sustain that dependence,” Ibeh said.

The Nigeria assessment report highlighted a contradiction between the country’s climate commitments and production plans. It said Nigeria aimed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 while retaining an official target to produce three million barrels of oil daily by 2030.

The report also cited Cameroon’s decision to move five oil exploration blocks into contract negotiations with Murphy West Africa and Octavia Energy as an example of the tension between climate pledges and fossil fuel development.

CAPPA questioned the promotion of natural gas as a clean transition fuel, noting that methane, its principal component, was responsible for nearly 30 per cent of warming since the Industrial Revolution.

Ibeh further noted that investments prolonging dependence on gas required scrutiny because of their climate consequences and the public resources they diverted from renewable energy.

The reports also raised concerns about carbon markets, arguing that offsetting could allow polluters to delay cutting emissions at source by claiming compensation through projects elsewhere, including forests and plantations.

The organisation cited Uganda’s climate plan, which assigns far greater projected emissions reductions to commercial plantations than to its two natural-forest restoration measures, while referencing Oakland Institute documentation of forced evictions linked to a forestry and carbon-credit project in Kachung, Uganda.

CAPPA warned that rural communities could lose ancestral lands to corporations pursuing projects presented as green, particularly where land rights were weak and affected people had little influence over decisions.

It further questioned climate financing arrangements that rely heavily on loans, warning that African countries could repay more than they received while responding to a crisis they contributed relatively little to creating.

“When countries must borrow to confront damage they have done little to cause, climate finance risks transferring the cost of historical pollution to its victims,” Ibeh said.

CAPPA noted that Nigeria estimated that it required $337bn between 2026 and 2035 to meet its climate commitments, with 80 per cent expected from international funding. Togo made 69.9 per cent of its financing requirement conditional on international support, while approximately 80 per cent of international financial support recorded for South Africa’s climate commitments in 2021 and 2022 came as loans.

The organisation cited research by Oxfam and the CARE Climate Justice Centre, which estimated that about $62bn in climate loans received by developing countries in 2022 could generate up to $88bn in repayments over their lifetime.

It said such arrangements risked shifting the financial burden of historical pollution to countries already experiencing disproportionate climate impacts.

The Nigeria assessment found that responsibility for implementing the energy transition was spread across institutions, financing depended heavily on anticipated investment, and workers and affected communities lacked sufficiently enforceable guarantees on income security, retraining and environmental repair.

CAPPA said a just transition should provide reliable and affordable electricity, protect livelihoods and restore damaged environments, especially in the Niger Delta and other areas affected by extraction.

Citing World Bank figures, Ibeh said more than 80 million Nigerians lacked access to electricity as of March 2025, arguing that the transition should deliver improved energy access alongside emissions reductions.

Ndivile Mokoena, Founder and Chief Executive of Yielding Intersectional Movements in South Africa, which participated in the five-country study, said climate commitments needed to translate into practical action, adequate financing and support for developing countries.

“The persistent gap between global climate commitments and local realities raises critical questions about political will and economic systems that continue to prioritise profit and growth over human well-being and ecological sustainability,” she said.

Acola Amina, Executive Director of Nia Environment and Zero Carbon Alliance in Uganda, said an inclusive climate agenda must reflect the realities and needs of affected communities.

“Achieving a rights-based, ecofeminist climate agenda that reflects Uganda’s realities and responds to the needs of affected communities requires inclusive participation and collective commitment,” she said.

CAPPA and its partners called on African negotiators at the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference in Türkiye to reject carbon offsetting as a substitute for direct emissions reductions and demand safeguards against corporate influence over national climate policies.

They urged governments to protect communal land and livelihoods, with enforceable rights for Indigenous Peoples, smallholder farmers, rural women and frontline communities against land appropriation for plantations and carbon projects.

The organisations also called for predictable, grant-based climate finance from historically high-emitting countries, rather than arrangements that deepen African countries’ indebtedness.

They advocated a planned and funded phase-down of fossil fuel extraction, supported by investment in decentralised renewable energy, affordable electricity, workers’ income security, retraining, environmental remediation and livelihood restoration.

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