The second Africa Climate Summit (ACS-2) took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between September 8 and 10, and was ostensibly convened towards shaping the continent’s priorities and commitments ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, later this year.  Like the first edition, which was held in 2023, this forum was promoted as a critical space to champion homegrown solutions for “adaptation” and “systems-level shifts.” However, African civil society organizations (CSOs) raised concerns about the prominence of external actors, noting that “African CSOs appear to be clustered largely around the pre-summit days or side events, rather than being woven into the central conversations.”

Ultimately, they were sounding the alarm that the omission of a diversity of African voices from the main fora reinforced perceptions of ACS-2 as being hijacked by those who “define Africa’s problems and prescribe Africa’s solutions, while African people are left as witnesses rather than decision-makers.”

Without a doubt, this hijacking of the ACS-2 agenda undermines African priorities, redefining them to fit foreign interests, be it those of transnational corporations or international financial institutions—essentially neocolonialism.

One can argue that the difference between neocolonialism and colonialism is that the former gives you an illusion of sovereignty, but decisions are dictated to you from elsewhere. Nothing exemplifies this better than the activities of big oil companies in Africa.

Take the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project, for instance. This 1,443-kilometer pipeline linking Uganda’s oil fields to Tanzania’s port city of Tanga is touted as an initiative that will catalyze economic transformation in the region. Yet it continues to reflect classic neocolonial extraction patterns: land loss, displacement, and the unraveling of communities, while big oil and their affiliated politicians, both local and international, profit.

Together with many brave people, I have spent the past six years working with frontline communities in East Africa, challenging fossil fuel projects that jeopardize their livelihoods and undermine their right to a clean and healthy environment. This includes work with fisherfolk in Lamu opposing a proposed coal plant, forest communities evicted despite their conservation efforts, and now efforts towards the Stop EACOP project, which will and has paved the road for much harm.

The EACOP project is, certainly, a representation of the larger neocolonial model. Consider its ownership; this project is East African only in name—the real owner is the French oil giant TotalEnergies, which owns 62 percent of its shares. But don’t take my word for it. A 2024 study by researchers Marcel Llavero-Pasquina and colleagues makes some bold assertions, including that TotalEnergies’ extraction deals are often intentionally made with undemocratic regimes, and backed by problematic French diplomacy. Their study concludes that “one cannot understand TotalEnergies today without the political history of French colonialism.”

Today, communities in Uganda and Tanzania are left wondering how this project, which came with so many promises, has resulted in so much pain with no end. To paint the picture, in 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) conducted 90 interviews, including with 75 displaced families in the five districts of Uganda where the pipeline crosses, and found that households were now  worse off than before.

In this same report, a 48-year-old woman supporting seven children, whose land was taken to pave way for the pipeline, shared that during the community’s first meeting with TotalEnergies, they were told that things were about to change for them and that they would no longer be poor. This report quotes her as saying: “Now, with the oil project starting, we are landless and are the poorest in the country.”

It doesn’t get better. In 2024, a Ugandan court ordered that 80 households be evicted for the pipeline despite genuine concerns causing the delays, including issues related to compensation that was below market value, among others. What’s more, if TotalEnergies is expected to receive a ten-year income tax exemption and the project’s life cycle is 25 years, noting that oil is finite, the taxable profits the government could have earned in revenue during these first ten years will be lost, and during the post-tax exemption, the volume would be insufficient to generate any significant revenue in taxes.

If you also consider that TotalEnergies is expected to receive substantial tax holidays, you can understand that the frontline communities that have had their environment and sources of livelihood sacrificed in the name of national good suffer a double tragedy, because the national government is receiving minimal financial benefit. Meanwhile, the oil will flow out to international markets, TotalEnergies will make its profit, and communities in East Africa will be left dealing with disrupted livelihoods, deepened poverty, and accelerated climate impacts

Additionally, considering the latest International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast that global oil will peak in the 2030s, doesn’t this clearly indicate that EACOP will end up being a stranded asset for the two governments, Tanzania and Uganda, while the investors will have recouped their investment, leaving the host governments to deal with a disgruntled population that has already sacrificed too much for so little?

Fast-forward to 2025, and the case that affected communities have filed with the help of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) Uganda in December 2024, which was due for hearing on August 18, 2025, was not heard, because the case file was, supposedly, missing. This hearing would have been instrumental in stopping their planned eviction and demolition of their properties. Meanwhile, the case against them by the government, filed on August 14, 2025, was fast-tracked, and a hearing date for August 25 was scheduled in a record four days.

While the majority of unfortunate examples I’ve cited here focus on Uganda, project-affected people in Tanzania are facing similar challenges, as documented in a report titled Climate of Fear by Global Witness, which reveals similar promises of transformed lives, only to lead to further impoverishment.

These experiences demonstrate the neocolonial nature of this controversial project. This is not a “development” initiative as it is claimed; it is the same colonial extraction repackaged in contemporary investment language. The pipeline will transport oil in its crude form to the global market without addressing any local needs, leaving the host communities to deal with the environmental and social impacts, especially considering the project will emit 379 million tons CO2e (MtCO2e) for the full value chain during its life cycle, as has been documented by the Climate Accountability Institute.

In postcolonial Africa, fossil fuel extraction has thrived because of Big Oil’s ability to co-opt governments to make decisions against their citizens and due to weak institutions that cannot challenge them to ensure communities are not harmed. Reflecting this trend, the national environmental management authorities in Uganda and Tanzania have come under sharp focus as concerns grow over their role in ensuring proper environmental and social impact assessments for EACOP are conducted.

This explains why movements like the StopEACOP campaign emerge. Neocolonialism may continue rearing its ugly head, but African communities are refusing to take it lying down. As Hardy Merriman argues in We Need People Power to Address a World in Peril, when formal institutions fail to protect people and the planet, movements emerge as democracy’s last line of defense. The StopEACOP coalition is, therefore, a result of communities coming together to support one another, backed by international allies working to dismantle enduring and repackaged colonial forces. When communities along the pipeline route mobilize to stop EACOP, they fulfill the role that strong, independent institutions should play in ensuring that only projects meeting the threshold of a livable future are granted permits.

As a journalist, I have seen how media “objectivity” has undermined frontline voices and propped up a model prioritizing profits over people, the environment, and the climate.

The outcome of this reporting is a portrayal of community struggles as a mere perspective to be balanced against well-oiled—pun intended—PR statements. It is this false equivalence that undermines lived experiences (and while I’m on the subject of the media, it is worth mentioning that we have some outlets that are keen on highlighting people-centered narratives and publishing stories that otherwise get killed in most newsrooms).

With such dynamics in our institutions, whether within state environmental management organizations or the media, it is therefore not surprising that even events focused on Africa, like the ACS, lack autonomous African leadership. This underscores the need for African movements to occupy and reclaim these key spaces, and the imperative for all to remain vigilant about how energy conversations shape up, within the African Climate Summit and beyond, and ask questions such as: Energy for what and for whom?