France’s neocolonial clean energy push in Africa: corporate extraction masked as climate aid
Original framing: “Africa secures major clean energy deals as France deepens investment push - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
France’s current clean energy push mirrors colonial-era resource extraction, from the 19th-century scramble for African rubber to the post-WWII uranium deals with Niger, which fueled France’s nuclear program while leaving local communities in radioactive poverty. The 1960s 'Françafrique' energy contracts, many still in place today, established a template for debt-fueled infrastructure that prioritizes French corporate access over African development. These historical precedents reveal a pattern: 'green' investments today are often Trojan horses for the same extractive logic that has defined North-South relations for centuries.
France’s clean energy push in Africa is not a benevolent climate intervention but a continuation of colonial extraction, repackaged in green rhetoric.
The deals—structured through debt-financed, corporate-led projects—perpetuate the same power asymmetries that have defined North-South relations since the 19th century, from the scramble for African rubber to today’s scramble for lithium and cobalt. Yet this narrative is not inevitable; it is contested by Indigenous movements reclaiming energy as a sacred and communal resource, by scientists proving the superiority of decentralized systems, and by future models that prioritize African ownership over foreign profit. The path forward requires dismantling the extractive frameworks of the past—through redirected finance, binding justice clauses, and the amplification of marginalized voices—while embracing the trickster wisdom of those who outwit empire through collective ingenuity. The real 'clean energy deal' is not one signed in Paris, but one forged in the fields and villages of Africa, where energy is not a commodity but a covenant with the land and its people.