Museveni to Europe: Your failure to meet climate goals is not Africa’s problem

President Yoweri Museveni has condemned Europe’s decision to return to coal-fired plants and yet they label fossil fuel investment in Africa as unacceptable.

Reports from Europe indicate that a vast wind farm is being demolished to make way for a new open-pit coal mine as a temporary measure to mitigate the energy shortages caused by the war in Ukraine.

They claim that as soon as the conflict ends, the race to a renewable future will recommence.

However, the president has in a statement issued today said it is the purest hypocrisy and a mockery of their commitments to climate targets and their promises to help speed African development all in one breath.

According to Museveni, it’s unfair for Europeans to get jobs out of diverse means of electricity production while Africans have neither and are forced to make life-threatening crossings of the Mediterranean sea to Europe and hundreds of millions of Africans are without access to electricity.

He adds that it is morally bankrupt for Europeans to expect to take Africa’s fossil fuels for their own energy production but refuse to countenance African use of those same fuels for theirs.

Museveni thus warns that Africa will not accept “one rule for them and another rule for us” adding Europe’s failure to meet its climate goals should not be Africa’s problem.

Written by Ritah Kemigisa