Oil Debate: Centuries of Racist [Entrenched] European Hypocrisy against Africans

By Ofwono Opondo

By last Thursday, 22, Aug 2022, the reported EU parliament resolution on EACOP hadn’t been formally transmitted to Uganda or Tanzanian governments either by Brussels or diplomatic missions here.

Their dispute, therefore, is less about protecting nature, tourism, human and economic rights, or democratic governance.

Racist Europeans oppose our black skin colour. They continue detesting African cultures, traditions, languages and religious beliefs, the reason they tried to abolish them during colonialism in their schools, places of worship and administrative centers.

To date, an African is considered worth so little, if they don’t hold a European name, and unfortunately, our local so-called Christian faiths accept it. 

It is necessary to state that Europeans continued to fan low-Intensity Conflicts (LIC) around the world, like in Mali, Cameroon, DRC, and Yemen among others to prevent the successful exploitation of natural resources because in doing so, prospective investors and financiers get scared away, especially in light of China and Russia.

The rejection of our cultures and languages was meant to ‘save’ the “savage Africans,” by the racist Whites, invariably most of them men, except for a few Queens, most now departed.

They colonized and opposed Africa’s struggle for independence because, they argued, we were better under their york. A decade before China trooped into Africa with money, funding, and skills, Europeans opposed the road, hydropower stations and speed railway construction in Africa claiming it was unprofitable.

For a while now, an unexplained association with Muslim Arabs is frowned upon because one could be undergoing indoctrination for religious extremism and possibly terrorism.

They have been scaring the hell out of Africans not to associate with Chinese and Russians because they’re against European Christianity, development, democracy, capitalism, and against human rights including LGBT marriages. Matters aren’t helped by Africans who continue looking to White Europeans for solutions even for basic problems for food, clothing, and shelter.

One way to resolve this hypocrisy could be for African governments to collectively withdraw their representations from EU capitals in an act of disapproval, not war. African leaders suspend going to Europe while discussions on mutual respect and cooperation are undertaken because Africa loses little if its leaders don’t travel to the EU or US.

Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that last week, the EU parliament passed a resolution rebuking Uganda, and warning financiers in Europe not to support or fund the construction of the 1443 km petroleum pipeline from Uganda’s oil wells in the Albertine Graben in Bulisa district to Tanzania’s coastal port of Tanga.

And just so you don’t forget, they opposed the construction of the Bujagali hydro dam and oil refinery even within Uganda. In short, they don’t want Ugandans to exploit the petroleum resources and get many accrued benefits because Uganda was more self-reliant.

The lofty reasons being advanced are simply catchphrase scarecrows to douse Africans into collective amnesia about Climate Change, which if not stopped, NOW, there will be an infinite danger.

It’s a scarecrow because while the EU damns Africa, China and Russia for developing fossil fuels, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, US, UK, Australia and their allies in the Arab world continue to drill, and in some cases are giving out new oil drilling and coal mine licenses.

The UK’s brand-new Prime minister Liz Truss, in her Trussnomics is set to announce granting fracking licenses after a short moratorium, and that is if you don’t consider that COP26 (Nov 2021), was held in Glasgow, Scotland.

The earlier UK announced it was also beginning oil drilling in the North Sea, and also opening new coal mines after a thirty-year moratorium.

In January 2022, even before the ink on COP26 papers, dried than Norway announced issuing fifty-three new oil drilling licenses in the North Sea.

It also announced that it will drill oil in the Arctic Sea, home to endangered polar bears. And never mind that Norway actually has USD1.3 trillion stashed in an oil Fund for a rainy day. The Netherlands was reclaimed from Sea, and second to the UK in fossil fuel production in Europe.

Germany, the biggest opponent to funding Africa’s oil projects, is rather best known for brutal rule in Tanganyika, genocide in Namibia, and its own Nazi era depends on Russian fossil fuels even with Western sanctions for war in Ukraine. Only this week, Andrzej Sebastian Duda, president of Poland was signing deals for Nigerian fossil fuels.

As decades of own false righteousness, the rise of China, and now Covid-19, European economies are reeling into a deep pit to sustain their luxurious lifestyles, and have belatedly wakened to realities that fossil fuels are still inevitable. However, they still think that it’s only their welfare is at stake, and Africa must play along with the old and discredited paradigm dictated by their greed. Fortunately, there’s waking up in Africa and can no longer be colonized or primitively exploited as before.

All these developments are accompanied by the unstoppable rise and cooperation of China, Russia, Japan, India, Asia and the Middle East which are providing global centers of gravity and good alternatives to the racist Western empire.

The writer is the executive director of Uganda Media Centre