Tag: Jusper Machogu

Africa’s Renewable Leapfrog Is a Mirage—A Dangerous One

A report titled “African Energy Leadership: The Case for 100% Renewable Energy” was published last week, claiming that “Africa could save between $3 trillion and $5 trillion by transitioning to a fully renewable energy system by 2050.” This shift, it asserted, would also create up to 5.4 million new energy sector jobs, significantly more than the 3.2 million jobs projected “under current fossil fuel trajectories.” This report by the environmental NGO (ENGO) Power Shift Africa in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures (UTS-ISF) was launched at the Bonn Climate Conference (SB62).

From Watts Up With That?

Tilak Doshi’s Substack


Tilak Doshi

A report titled “African Energy Leadership: The Case for 100% Renewable Energy” was published last week, claiming that “Africa could save between $3 trillion and $5 trillion by transitioning to a fully renewable energy system by 2050.” This shift, it asserted, would also create up to 5.4 million new energy sector jobs, significantly more than the 3.2 million jobs projected “under current fossil fuel trajectories.” This report by the environmental NGO (ENGO) Power Shift Africa in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures (UTS-ISF) was launched at the Bonn Climate Conference (SB62).

In recent years, the concept of “leapfrogging” over fossil‑fuel development to craft a 100 % renewable energy system in Africa has gained traction: bypass oil, gas and coal, build “clean” solar and wind farms instead, and align with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 °C global warming target. Proponents point to “dramatic cost reductions” in solar and wind, enormous “theoretical potential” and massive economic benefits with “millions of new green jobs”.

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And yet for all these glossy numbers, the physics, economics, and on‑the‑ground realities tell a far more sobering story. The leapfrog narrative is less a roadmap to prosperity than a vapid fig‑leaf for Western moral satisfaction, an exercise in a hypocritical carbon colonialism.

Leapfrogging is an Empty Notion

The concept of Africa leapfrogging to a 100% renewable energy system, bypassing conventional fossil fuels, defies the fundamental constraints of physics and economics. This has been incisively outlined by Mark P. Mills in his paper on “magical thinking” among promoters of renewable energy. Mills argues that renewables like solar and wind, despite cost declines, are inherently limited by their low energy density and intermittency, requiring vast land areas and expensive storage solutions to achieve reliability—challenges magnified in Africa’s context, where industrial-scale energy demand is critical for modern economic growth.

Solar and wind’s capacity factors (20–30% in optimal conditions) cannot match the consistent, high-density output of fossil fuels, which are essential for powering heavy industry, urban infrastructure, hospitals, water treatment plants and the like. Economically, the massive capital required for grid upgrades, battery storage, and transmission interconnectors—estimated at $100 billion annually for universal energy access by 2030—far exceeds Africa’s current 2–3% share of global renewable investments. Expecting renewables alone to meet Africa’s energy needs ignores the physical reality of energy density and the economic impracticality of scaling intermittent sources without reliable backups. These facts render leapfrogging a fantastical notion detached from the continent’s developmental imperatives.

Environmental zealots in the West would deny Africa the very infrastructure that historically lifted their own societies out of poverty. For instance, a major pollution problem afflicting developing countries is the domestic combustion of solid (bio)fuels. According to the World Health Organization, 4.3 million deaths annually are directly attributable to indoor air pollution. If poor Africans remain stuck on traditional biomass cookstoves instead of gaining access to cheap propane gas or cheap and reliable grid electricity (fuelled by natural gas or coal), this annual toll will only rise. In rich countries, households moved from dung, wood and crop residue fires to coal, to oil, to gas and electricity—each step up the energy ladder improving well‑being.

Today, those building blocks are blocked or actively removed by the climate zealots working via ENGOs and captive institutions of the climate industrial complex like the World Bank and the IMF. Instead of reliable electric grids, Africa is offered solar cookstoves and humanitarian sentiment—an insult in the guise of charity. As Vaclav Smil has conclusively demonstrated, no country in the world has developed without the dense energy available from fossil fuels. Coal, oil and natural gas have powered urbanization, industrialization and agricultural productivity.

What Do African Leaders Want?

It is not possible to generalize across the vast continent, but some facts stand out. Africa is the world’s second largest and second-most populous continent (after Asia in both aspects). Unlike Asia, Africa remains largely mired in poverty and much of the population has limited access to energy. Africa’s 54 countries, 3 dependencies, and one disputed territory (Western Sahara) accounted for just over 18% of the world’s population in 2020 but its share of global primary energy consumption amounted to only 3.4% in 2022. Poverty and poor access to energy, one suspects, are not just coincidences but reflective of a more general malaise. But what are its governments doing about it?

The African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change was established as an alliance of African member states to represent the interests of the region in international climate change negotiations with “a common and unified voice”. In an interview in June 2022, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) on climate change, Mr. Ephraim Mwepya Shitima of Zambia, said that “COP27 should be about advancing implementation of the [UN IPCC’s] National Determined Contributions (NDCs), including adaptation and mitigation efforts and delivery of finance to enhance implementation.”

In short, Mr. Shitima seemed to represent Africa as a supplicant for climate finance:

Africa is poor and responsible for a relatively small share of global carbon dioxide emissions yet suffers from the effects of climate change. Surely the developed countries, who are responsible for most of the historical emissions, need to financially assist Africa in adapting to climate change in any equitable outcome. For its part, Africa will pursue a “low carbon” and “sustainable” development trajectory.

This position, however, is far from representing a common and unified voice for the continent. In the lead up to COP27 (held in Egypt in 2023), Amani Abou-Zeid, the African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, said that African countries advocated for “a common energy position that sees fossil fuels as necessary to expanding economies and electricity access.” N. J. Ayuk, Executive Chairman at the African Energy Chamber, is even more forthright:

“Africans don’t hate Oil and Gas companies. We love Oil and today we love gas even more because we know gas will give us a chance to industrialize. No country has ever been developed by fancy wind and green hydrogen. Africans see Oil and Gas as a path to success and a solution to their problems. The demonization of oil and gas companies will not work.”

Younger, more dynamic African leaders such as Abou-Zeid, Ayuk and Jusper Machogu find it not only infeasible but immoral for their governments to leave their fossil fuels resources in the ground in return for “climate finance” from virtue-signaling Western governments and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank to invest on unreliable solar and wind. Africa needs all the coal, oil and gas it can exploit, to achieve rapid economic development for their aspiring populations. Asia, and now President Trump’s American “energy dominance”, are their models for fossil fuel-based economic development, not a hypocritical, deluded EU that has begun backpedalling from the costly “energy transition” that their own citizens are rebelling against.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright believes that fossil fuels are the solution to the widespread lack of energy access in Africa, dismissing the challenge posed by climate change and calling too much emphasis on addressing it “destructive.” Speaking to a roomful of African officials and business people at a Powering Africa summit in Washington earlier this year, Secretary Wright said Western countries such as the United States have for years been “shamelessly” telling Africa that coal is bad and not to develop it. He said:

“That’s just nonsense, 100 percent nonsense…Coal transformed our world and made it better, extended life expectancy and grew opportunities, and coal globally will be the largest source of electricity for decades to come. That’s not a policy, that’s not a desire, that’s just a reality.”

As the Net Zero and “energy transition” narratives get increasingly threadbare, global investments into fossil fuel projects are surging. Global banks significantly increased their financing for coal, oil and gas projects last year, according to a new report by climate advocacy groups including the Rainforest Action Network and the Sierra Club, marking a reversal at a time when lenders are backtracking on climate pledges. According to the recently published report, banks fossil fuel financing was 23% higher than the previous year.

A spate of oil and gas projects are now being financed in Niger, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, Uganda and Kenya. In March, under Secretary Wright’s watch, the US Export-Import Bank (Exim) approved a direct loan of up to $4.7 billion to support the world-class Mozambique LNG project in Cabo Delgado, marking a significant milestone in the project’s revival after years of uncertainty.

Enough with the Technobabble

What is it about Africa that attracts Western climate zealots to offer policy advice on energy and environment? Is it that the West suffers from a Rousseau-esque angst over modern life and hankers after a mythological state of nature in Africa? Does the myth of the noble savage compel Westerners who regret their modern industrial norms to practice carbon imperialism over the world’s least developed continent? The “do as I say, not as I did” syndrome which afflicts Western intelligentsia is applied with particular insistence to African policymakers, given that the major Asian developing countries depend less on international development aid and finance for their domestic investments.

Africa is not an anthropological museum for Western virtue, and the energy “leapfrogging” myth is a neo-colonial fable dressed in technobabble. Africa should climb the same energy ladder that raised the West out of an energy-starved perennial poverty of the pre-industrial era.

A version of this article was first published at:

https://www.climateskeptic.org/p/africas-renewable-leapfrog-is-a-dangerous?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web

Wrong, BBC, the Popular Kenyan Farmer Is Right, There Is No Climate Emergency, Africa Does Need Fossil Fuels

The BBC recently published a hit piece posing as an article attacking a Kenyan farmer who has developed a modest following on X, for his skeptical view of climate alarm claims, and his experienced based understanding that Africans need and deserve to develop fossil fuels. The farmer, Jusper Machogu, is right. In reality, it is the BBC’s “climate change misinformation” reporter who is misleading readers. Not only is the target of the hit piece correct that fossil fuels would be good for Africa, but the BBC reporter’s assertion that Africa is uniquely battered by climate change is false.

Screenshot from X of a photo posted by Machogu: https://x.com/JusperMachogu/status/1800013619838546241

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

The BBC recently published a hit piece posing as an article attacking a Kenyan farmer who has developed a modest following on X, for his skeptical view of climate alarm claims, and his experienced based understanding that Africans need and deserve to develop fossil fuels. The farmer, Jusper Machogu, is right. In reality, it is the BBC’s “climate change misinformation” reporter who is misleading readers. Not only is the target of the hit piece correct that fossil fuels would be good for Africa, but the BBC reporter’s assertion that Africa is uniquely battered by climate change is false.

The BBC’s Marco Silva wrote the article, “How a Kenyan farmer became a champion of climate change denial,” covering the social media activity on X of a young Kenyan farmer and agricultural engineer, Jusper Machogu, who strongly supports and frequently posts that apocalyptic climate change claims are false and about fossil fuel development for Africa.

Machogu’s post history mostly involves him advocating for the mechanization and modernization of farming in Africa, enthusiastically praising synthetic fertilizers, tractors, and other production-boosting technologies that are made possible by fossil fuels and their derivatives. He has extensive knowledge about agriculture, including why “green” methods of farming and fertilizer production are nowhere near as effective as the processes involving fossil fuels.

The fact that African agriculture has benefitted from the use of fossil fuels has been covered at Climate Realism extensively.

Silva warns ominously that Machogu is a “flagbearer for fossil fuels in Africa, but there is more to his campaign than meets the eye,” accusing him of being motivated exclusively by financial gain to post “debunked theories about climate change[.]” Silva’s evidence of this is that Machogu got a whopping $9,000 over the course of two years in donations, “some of which came from individuals in Western countries linked to fossil-fuel interests.” This is just scummy on the part of Silva, an ad hominem attack on Machogu’s character and possible motivations rather than the content of his posts.

Silva doesn’t attempt to engage with Machogu’s claims that “there is no climate crisis,” except to cite specific experts who disagree. Machogu has written that his research has led him to believe that climate change is mostly natural, posting on X ““Climate change is mostly natural. A warmer climate is good for life,” to which Silva blithely responds that Machogu, “wrongly claimed in a tweet posted in February, along with the hashtag #ClimateScam (which he has used hundreds of times).” Silva cites no evidence for his claim that Machogu’s claims about climate change being natural and a warmer world being good for life are wrong — where’s his proof? That, of course, would have been to engage in facts rather than deploying smarmy rhetoric.

The problem for Silva is, as Climate Realism has shown in hundreds of articles, there is no evidence whatsoever that climate change is making the world worse for humanity. In fact, people are living longer, more food is being produced, the earth is greening, and fewer people are dying from extreme weather and non-optimum temperatures than ever in history. In short, data strongly suggests that it is the poor farmer rather than the educated journalist who is right about climate change, a warmer climate is good for life. Once again, rather than disputing Mochogu’s claims with data, Silva then parrots a talking point that Africa is particularly vulnerable to climate change and its alleged effects “including more intense and frequent heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and devastating floods.” He provides no proof for these claims, either, because there is none.

Computer model projections may predict that Africa might someday suffer ill effects from climate change, and propagandist journalists may promote the idea every time some part of the continent is suffering from extreme weather, but real world data debunk such claims. The bulk of evidence show that Africa is not suffering from worse or more prolonged heatwaves, drought, or flooding, as covered in several posts by Climate Realism.

Machogu is also correct that greater fossil fuel development and use would benefit poor African nations, so long as they get to reap the benefits of having the products and energy security that fossil fuels provide, instead of having African fossil fuels exploited by corrupt governments or shipped off to energy-hungry Western nations. Silva attempts to head off this obvious point by quoting a Ugandan climate activist, writing that “fossil fuel exploration has not always been a synonym for growth and development in Africa.”

But this does not address the point at all. Just because some development has been exploitative doesn’t mean that Machogu is wrong.

Trying to stop Africans from using cheap, plentiful energy from fossil fuels makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to adapt to natural weather disasters. Similarly, as Machogu, who actually lives in a region where so-called “sustainable” farming practices dominate, points out, organic and non-mechanized farming are all fun and games when your life does not depend on it, but give lower yields and increase the threat of famine, as it did in Sri Lanka.

Modern synthetic fertilizers and fossil-fuel powered equipment have already helped African nations’ food production increase over time, reducing hunger and malnutrition, regardless of extreme weather events, as discussed here, here, and here. For a specific example, see African cereal yield data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization since just the 1990s. (See figure below)

Over the same period which has seen the most climate alarmism amid modest warming:

  • Cereal production rose 131 percent;
  • Yield rose 48 percent;
  • New all-time production records have been 7 times between 2011 to 2021.

To get an idea even further of the kind of dishonesty and underhanded tactics employed by Silva in his thread, take a look at this quote:

“When we spoke, Jusper told me his beliefs are shared by many people in Africa, but I found that most users engaging with his X account are actually based in the US, the UK, and Canada,” Silva wrote.

This is an obvious bait and switch that anyone with a functioning brain can see. Jusper Machogu has lived experience, every single day, with African sustenance farming communities outside of social media. There are far more Westerners with daily internet access than there are Africans that do; ironically, the former being yet another result of the Western world’s fossil fuel-based infrastructure.

It’s also worth noting the projection coming from Silva. While he suggests that Machogu’s opinions are bought and paid for, Silva himself advertises the fact that he is part of a propaganda network called the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, a Reuters Institute project and one of many similar networks that are supposed to increase the “impact” of climate coverage in the news. They are an activist organization, founded to hype alarming climate claims. Given the lack of honesty, journalistic rigor, and underhanded tactics employed by Silva, that organization and those like it should be ignored or avoided by anyone who values factual reporting and integrity.

This is what we call punching down; a comparatively wealthy western journalist working for one of the biggest news organizations on the planet targeting a single man with a modest following on X.

Perhaps, what alarms Silva the most is that Machogu’s beliefs about the benefits of fossil fuel development in the face of Western hostility to the same is gaining currency in Africa. Silva writes:

“We need fossil fuels to develop our Africa,” Mr Machogu tweeted last year.

This view appears to be shared by some African governments, who have given their go-ahead to new oil and gas projects despite pledging to “transition away” from fossil fuels.

Leaders like Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni have argued that it is hypocritical for Western nations to impose restrictions on African states, when they have become rich from fossil fuels.

Silva bemoans the fact that African nations are increasingly not towing the Western world’s party line on the dangers of fossil fuels and the need to eschew their use.

Machogu is clearly a threat to mainstream climate propaganda because he comes from the nations the Western world it trying to shut out of fossil fuel use, making them permanent vassal states dependent on foreign aid. He knows from experience the problems poor African farmers face, and he knows that climate change is not significant among them, while paternalistic green colonialism is. Mochogu should be applauded for daily showing the reality of living without access to fossil fuels and battling bravely for the development of those resources despite the constant pressure from foreign interests, many of them former colonial powers and their lickspittles in the mainstream media like the BBC, to remain underdeveloped.