Tag: Senegal

‘Green’ Ideology a Force for African Oppression

After 2030, the number of people in extreme poverty is expected to start rising again, driven largely by Africa. While the rest of the world marches toward prosperity, Africa is being forced into a trajectory of destitution. The data is an indictment of the modern “green” agenda.

From ‘CO2 Coalition

By Vijay Jayaraj

After 2030, the number of people in extreme poverty is expected to start rising again, driven largely by Africa. While the rest of the world marches toward prosperity, Africa is being forced into a trajectory of destitution. The data is an indictment of the modern “green” agenda.

Anatomy of Despair 

Extreme poverty is not an abstraction in Africa. SubSaharan Africa now accounts for about 67% of the global population living in extreme poverty, up sharply from a few decades ago.  

Surveys across 39 African countries between 2021 and 2023 found that at least 90% of respondents reported facing material deprivation. About 80% of respondents had gone without cash income at least once in the previous year, 66% went without medicines or medical care, and around six in 10 went without enough food. More than 50% reported that they had lacked access to cooking fuel or clean water at least once. 

For Westerners fussing about Netflix streaming subscriptions or airline seat sizes, this is an alternate universe difficult even to imagine. 

In countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Burundi, and the Central African Republic, more than half the population remains trapped below the global poverty line, and the number of poor rises with population growth because real economic opportunity has been lacking.

This economic stagnation has a terrifying mathematical consequence: As populations grow, the number of people in extreme poverty increases in lockstep. The projection is that after 2030, the global headcount of those in extreme poverty will rise, driven almost entirely by the crisis in Africa.

Africa is desperate for an aggressive blueprint for expansion that unleashes all assets. The continent brims with untapped minerals, arable land, and youthful labor forces, but unlocking them requires energy – abundant, affordable and reliable.  

History suggests that no region has escaped poverty without prioritizing growth above all, deploying local strengths to fuel factories, farms and cities. 

From the 1980s onward, per capita gross domestic product in much of Asia surged relative to sub‑Saharan Africa. Asian economies – led by China and India – have lifted hundreds of millions out of squalor. They did it by embracing industrialization and the dense, reliable energy required to power it – mostly with coal. In Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia, per capita incomes have climbed over decades as societies rode successive waves of growth powered by fossil fuels. 

The pattern is unmistakable. Where energy use grows quickly, poverty declines rapidly. 

If decisive push for African growth does not materialize in the coming decades, projections of rising poverty will become reality. For a region blessed with energy resources and other raw materials, this would be an embarrassing and tragic failure. 

The second largest continent in land area, Africa has the youngest population. Its 1.6 billion people have a median age of under 20 compared to a global average of over 31. (Median age for North America and Europe are 39 and 43, respectively.) 

The coming African demographic surge that such youth portends means hundreds of millions languishing in cycles of deprivation, unrest and humanitarian crises that spill across borders. That is, unless half-measures are replaced with an enthusiastic embrace of economic growth. 

The tragedy is that the political leadership in Africa knows what is required. Leaders across the continent have shown a willingness to tap domestic gas reserves, develop coal resources, and attract investment in refining and petrochemicals. You hear it in speeches from heads of state in Nigeria, Senegal and Mozambique. They speak about “energy sovereignty” and the right to use their own resources to fight poverty.  

Yet the reach of the global anti‑fossil‑fuel campaign is more than any African government can counter on its own. Western‑based organizations and public development banks have spent years rewriting their lending rules to restrict support for coal projects and, increasingly, for oil and gas infrastructure. Large European and American financial institutions have adopted policies that discourage financing of fossil fuel projects in Africa while continuing to rely on these fuels themselves. 

Africa does not need Western pity, and it certainly does not need its solar panels. It requires the freedom to burn gas, mine coal and drill for oil – just as the West did. Africa’s young population deserves the same industry-powered societal leap that lifted billions out of poverty in Asia and the West. The green ideology that runs counter to this vision is one of oppressors, not of nature’s caretakers. 

Originally published in PJ Media on February 16, 2026.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.

Get Your Facts Straight, PBS, Senegal’s Prospects Have Improved Amid Climate Change

PBS News ran a story claiming Senegal is suffering from climate change and that developed countries aren’t keeping their pledges to help the country out. The first claim is definitely false, Senegal’s economy has experienced significant growth during the recent period of slight warming. Another major metric for improved prospects, life span, has improved markedly as well. Concerning the second claim, it is unclear whether developed countries have made specific commitments to Senegal regarding climate funding, but it is certainly clear that Senegal gets billions in foreign aid each year.

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

PBS News ran a story claiming Senegal is suffering from climate change and that developed countries aren’t keeping their pledges to help the country out. The first claim is definitely false, Senegal’s economy has experienced significant growth during the recent period of slight warming. Another major metric for improved prospects, life span, has improved markedly as well. Concerning the second claim, it is unclear whether developed countries have made specific commitments to Senegal regarding climate funding, but it is certainly clear that Senegal gets billions in foreign aid each year.

The story, “Senegal struggles to cope with climate change despite promises of help from other nations,” consists of a series of interviews with and anecdotes shared by select Senegalese with PBS about the troubles they face, which they tie to climate change and lack of Western funding for climate mitigation. In particular, PBS’s story focuses on woes of Senegal’s fishing industry and non-governmental organizations’ (NGO) claims that the world isn’t providing promised funds to held the country contend with climate change. Even while acknowledging funding from the World Bank built a sea wall which helped prevent flooding, beach erosion, and benefited tourism, Fred de Sam Lazaro reporting for PBS says:

[E]fforts so far by the World Bank and donor nations have done little to help those hardest hit. Around Saint-Louis, which has long been pummeled by devastating floods, a two-mile seawall was built and fishing families relocated farther inland. They’re safer, they say, but hardly secure.

. . .

Their struggle is starkly visible in fishing communities up and down the coast. A backbreaking morning’s worth of work, and all that this boat brought back today was one crate about a quarter filled with anything that is marketable out there.

Climate change has diminished the quality of fisheries.

The problem for Lazaro’s narrative is that he points to no data, nothing identifiable as evidence, much less definitive proof, that climate change is behind the hardship that Senegal’s fishing communities are facing, which is, in fact, leading some people from the fishing villages to migrate.

Fishing is a staple of Senegal’s economy.

“Senegal has one of the world’s richest fishing grounds. With an annual catch rate of 450,000 MT per year, for the last five years. Senegal has been the second largest fish producer in West Africa,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture states.

PBS presents no evidence, because there is none, that climate change is worsening fishing conditions or contributing to depleted fish stocks. In fact, while the Senegalese fishing industry’s catch varies from year to year, the value of its catch has risen fairly steadily, suggesting the industry as a whole is doing well, despite problems discussed below. Accordingly, Senegal’s fishing industry must look to another cause for its woes. And there is a more viable culprit: illegal fishing by foreign operators.

Senegal’s fishing fleet is made up of traditional small boats that can’t compete with the foreign commercial trawlers which have increasingly violated Senegal’s 12-mile exclusive fishing zone over the past decade. The government’s efforts stop foreign fishing is underfunded and has largely been ineffective. As one source notes, “[i]t has been estimated that the country’s fishermen lose 300,000 tonnes of fish each year to illegal fishing.”

This is a problem even Lazaro recognizes, saying “… complicating matters, they complain large foreign trawlers whoop up a lot of what’s left.” Because commercial fishing is capital and energy intensive, commercial trawlers wouldn’t come half-way around the world to poach in Senegal’s fishing grounds if it didn’t hold large fish stocks.

Foreign trawlers are forcing Senegal’s small artisanal fishers to sail their small boats farther from shore, yet those boats are ill-suited to deep sea fishing.

Having disposed of the misleading assertion that climate change is harming Senegal’s fishing industry, broader data also puts lie to the PBS’s assertion that “Senegal struggles to cope with climate change ….”

During the recent period of modest warming Senegal’s economic growth has generally been strong. In 2023 Senegal’s GDP grew by 4.6 percent, an enviable rate for any developed country. For comparison, U.S. GDP grew by just 2.5 percent in 2023. As recently as 2017, Senegal’s GDP grew by 7.4 percent and in 2021 by 6.5 percent. In fact, from 2014 through 2023, Senegal experienced GDP growth averaging 5.34 percent.

And from 2000 through 2022, Senegal’s life expectancy increased from 56.9 years to 67.9 years, adding more than ten years to the average Senegalese’s lifespan in just over 20 years, during a two decade period that climate alarmists have misleadingly refered to as the warmest decades on record.

Agriculture comprises a large part of Senegal’s economy, and there, as in other countries and regions around the world, climate change has contributed to improved growing conditions and crop yields. Most of Senegal’s crops are grown for domestic consumption, rather than trade in international markets. Among the top crops grown in Senegal are, maize, mangoes, millet, rice, and sorghum. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization data show that from 1990 through 2023:

  • Senegal’s maize yield increased by more than 196 percent;
  • Senegal’s mango yield expanded by about 8.5 percent;
  • Yields of millet in Senegal grew by nearly 132 percent;
  • Rice yields in Senegal increased by about 54 percent; and
  • Senegal’s Sorghum yields grew by a little more than 88 percent. (See the figure, below)

Since research has clearly established that a large percentage of the increase in crop production and yields during the recent period of climate change is a direct result of the fertilization effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and generally improved growing conditions and moisture, climate change has benefitted Senegal’s agriculture industry.

Since there is no evidence that climate change has harmed Senegal, it is hard to claim that developed countries have failed in their “duty,” to fund Senegal’s defense against and reparations for climate change, as PBS claims.

Concerning foreign aid, Senegal receives billions of foreign aid each year, directly from national governments and multi-lateral banks and development agencies funded by governments. In 2022 alone, Senegal received $1.45 billion in foreign assistance, $206 million of which came from the U.S. across various government agencies. In fact, from 2010 through 2023, the United States alone provided approximately $3.29 billion in aid. According to the U.S. State Department the aide delivered to Senegal:

U.S. assistance to Senegal seeks to increase agricultural productivity, bolster private-sector economic growth, improve health care and health security, reform and modernize the energy sector, mitigate the effects of climate change, strengthen basic education, and empower local actors.

The italicized sections show that the United States did deliver aid to Senegal to enable it to respond and adapt to climate change. Neither the global nor U.S. aid delivered to Senegal may meet PBS’ or the NGOs’ it interviewed definition of “promises of help from other nations,” but I would argue most reasonable people would recognize those billions if not trillions of dollars in aid over time as nations’ helping.

PBS, like other mainstream media outlets, is like a dog with a bone, refusing to let go of the narrative that climate change is harming everyone, everywhere, even when the data show otherwise. Although data clearly show that conditions in Senegal are improving, it still remains a country mired in poverty, facing myriad problems. Climate change has neither caused these problems, nor has made Senegal’s situation worse. Claiming otherwise, as PBS is guilty of doing, misdirects attention from the real sources of the problems that the Senegalese people still face. This leads to a misallocation of resources available to minimize or solve the true underlying problems contributing Senegal’s poverty. The latter is the true tragedy related to climate change: the misreporting of the facts, leading to misdirected resources and slowed economic and health improvements in Senegal and around the globe.

Oil and Gas Turning Poor Countries into Economic Miracles

Nations once relegated to the margins of economic discourse are now sprinting toward prosperity, their trajectories propelled by a single, unifying force: energy.

From Watts Up With That?

By Vijay Jayaraj

Nations once relegated to the margins of economic discourse are now sprinting toward prosperity, their trajectories propelled by a single, unifying force: energy.

Energy is indispensable. From the huge AI data centers in the U.S. to the mega-scale manufacturing factories in China, affordable and dependable energy supplies make all the difference between living and thriving.

Access to domestic energy resources – or the ability to secure imports – unlocks a cascade of opportunity: Jobs multiply, infrastructure rises, and governments gain the fiscal muscle to invest in their people.

Oil and gas, derided by climate elites as relics of a bygone era, are proving instead to be the engines of a new dawn. A cohort of nations is charting a radically different course fueled by the unyielding pragmatism of hydrocarbon exploitation.

Guyana: From Obscurity to Oil Juggernaut

Nestled along South America’s northern coast, Guyana was once an afterthought in global economic discourse. Today, it is the world’s fastest-growing economy, with gross domestic product (GDP) skyrocketing by a staggering 63% in 2022 and 38% in 2023. It is projected to grow another 27% this year.

Guyana’s growth leaves even the vaunted “Asian Tigers” – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – in the dust. By 2025, analysts project a still-robust expansion of more than 14%, driven by the relentless output of the Stabroek Block, 6.6 million acres of oil reserves off the country’s Atlantic shoreline. The 2015 Liza discovery, a 10-billion-barrel bonanza, has transformed this nation of 810,000 into an energy powerhouse.

The fiscal windfall – $2.57 billion in 2024 alone – has funded infrastructure upgrades, healthcare expansions and education reforms. As Upstream Online reports, Guyana’s per capita income has quadrupled since 2019, a feat unimaginable without oil.

Niger: Africa’s Pipeline to Prosperity

Half a world away, in the arid expanses of West Africa, Niger is scripting a similar tale. Long known for uranium and subsistence farming, this landlocked nation is poised to ride an oil boom that could redefine its future.

The key? The Niger-Benin pipeline, a 1,212-mile conduit that promises to ferry crude from Niger’s Agadem Rift Basin to the Atlantic coast. After diplomatic hiccups with Benin were resolved in August 2024, production was expected to surge past 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the coming years. GDP is forecast to soar as a result.

Senegal: Gas Lights the Way Forward

Further west, Senegal is joining the energy-driven renaissance. The Sangomar oil field, which began production in June 2024, and the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) natural gas project, straddling the Senegal-Mauritania border, are rewriting the nation’s economic playbook.

In 2024, the Sangomar field exceeded its initial target, producing 16.9 million barrels of crude oil compared to the planned 11.7 million. With oil output exceeding 100,000 bpd and GTA is poised to deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) to global markets, Senegal’s GDP growth is projected to hit double digits in 2025, among the highest in Africa.

Senegal’s GDP growth was around 10% in 2024, and energy exports were projected to account for 30% of government revenue in 2025. Crucially, gas-fired power plants are slashing electricity costs, enabling industries to thrive.

Côte D’Ivoire: Diversification Through Hydrocarbons

Côte D’Ivoire, long reliant on cocoa and coffee, is emerging as West Africa’s quiet energy giant. The country has exceeded initial estimates for production from its Baleine oil and gas field.

Oil production has doubled since 2020 to 60,000 bpd, while natural gas – supplying 72% of the nation’s electricity – has lured industries from across the region. The country plans to reach 200,000 barrels of oil per day and 450 million cubic feet of gas daily by 2028.

Thanks to rapid oil and gas development, Cote d’Ivoire has managed to reduce its poverty rate from 55% in 2011 to 37% in 2021 (the latest data available). With oil output projected to more than triple in the next four years, the poverty rate could drop to single digits.

Energy poverty, not climate change, remains the immediate threat to these regions and continues to plague the future of millions of Africans and South Americans. Solar panels and windmills cannot power steel mills, factories or cities.

The governments of Guyana, Niger, Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire understand this. They are prioritizing their citizens’ livelihoods over “carbon-reduction” targets drafted by so-called elites in Brussels or New York.

Their success exposes the vacuity of net-zero dogma and reaffirms a timeless truth: Energy abundance is the foundation of human progress.

This commentary was first published at RealClearEnergy on April 1, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.