Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Paris, France
On June 26, 2019, the Kenyan courts suspended the construction of a coal-fired power plant, for which a mine was to be dug. A rare victory for environmental activists in Africa, where the mineral is praised above all for its economic benefits, regardless of its contribution to global warming.
Omar Elmawi, strongly opposed to the project, was at the National Environmental Tribunal that day. Contacted by telephone by AFP, he remembers “tears of joy” from the inhabitants of Lamu, a UNESCO World Heritage site near which the power plant was to be built.
“It was one of the most powerful moments of my life,” he smiles. Five years of mobilization and legal action had finally borne fruit.
The two-billion-euro power plant, never saw the light of day. Nor did the mine that was to supply it with coal, located in Kitui County, hundreds of kilometers to the west.
Although the promoters of the project, supported by the Kenyan government, have appealed, Omar Elmawi considers their chances of success to be slim. “We’ve set the bar high”, says the activist with satisfaction, in a Kenya where ‘90% of energy is green’ (hydroelectricity, solar, wind), whereas coal is a pollutant and a source of global warming, of which Africa is one of the main victims.
A few thousand kilometers away, at a conference on mining in Africa held in mid-July 2023 in Paris, Niger, an arid and poor country, nevertheless asserts that it is “not ashamed to promote” this mineral.
– 4% of global emissions” –
In the context of the country’s large electricity deficit, coal “is our way out”, Ousseini Hadizatou Yacouba, who was Niger’s Minister of Mines before the country’s recent coup d’état, told AFP.
Although Niger’s soils are rich in uranium, lithium and rare earths, and despite the country’s strong potential for solar energy, “we’re not in a situation where we’re going to say: ‘Let’s not mine coal because it’s a source of pollution’”, assures Ms. Yacouba.
And she ironizes: “Does a coal plant in Niger produce more emissions than the many vehicles and other industries there are” in Europe?
The reasoning is much the same in Côte d’Ivoire, where 22 mines, most of them gold, are in operation, 180 operating permits have been issued, and major gas and oil deposits have been discovered offshore.
“Even if we managed to eliminate African emissions today, it would make no difference to the rate of global warming”, when Africa ‘only contributes 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions’, says the Ivorian Minister of Mines, Energy and Petroleum.
Also interviewed by AFP in Paris in 2023, Mamadou Sangafowa Coulibaly praises the “net zero carbon” balance of hydrocarbons in Côte d’Ivoire, where “every gram of CO2 emitted corresponds to a project that allows it to be absorbed”, notably through reforestation.
The argument is reminiscent of those used by French giant TotalEnergies, which recently began exploiting oil in Uganda’s largest national park and built a 1,443 km heated pipeline to transport the material to the Tanzanian coast.
Scorned by environmental associations in Uganda and the West, as well as by many citizens, the project is strongly supported by the Ugandan and Tanzanian governments, who see it as a major economic source for their countries.
– Demographic dividend
“You can’t stop the development of sovereign countries”, remarks Pierre-Samuel Guedj, co-founder of Affectio Mutandi, a consultancy partner of the Paris mining conference.
And he insists on the “demographic dividend” to be considered over and above the climate issue. In 2050, there will be 2.5 billion Africans, twice as many as today, who will need to be “fed” and therefore “put to work”, he stresses.
Benin, whose soils abound in lithium, cobalt, tantalum, chromium and nickel, sees these minerals as “one of the driving forces behind its economic development”, according to Mines Minister Samou Seïdou Adambi.
Lithium is for batteries, which can be made in Benin,” he hopes. It’s going to create thousands of jobs. It will have a significant impact on youth unemployment”.
Another aspect of the problem is that “to make the ecological transition”, it is “inescapable” to dig new mines, as “recycling” the metals already extracted “will never be enough”, observes Jean-Claude Guillaneau, of the Bureau de recherches géologiques et minières, a French public establishment.
The issue is all the more thorny given that, according to this expert, “mining as a whole consumes around 10% of the world’s energy”.
For Guillaneau, the only solution is the “virtuous cycle” into which mining companies – once hermetically sealed off from environmental issues – have now embarked, for fear in particular of a scandal affecting their share price.
“Solar panels and wind turbines to supply the mines are now everywhere. In South Africa, the first green hydrogen mining trucks are appearing”, he notes. “If 10% of the world’s energy is consumed by mines, and that 10% comes from photovoltaic panels, wind turbines or green hydrogen, that’s still something”.
HUMANITERRE with AFP
