By Moses Desire Kouyo
It began with satellite images, climate reports, and pledges made in distant cities—New York, Paris, Oslo. Leaders of the Global North, freshly adorned with green credentials, vowed to fight climate change by protecting forests, storing carbon, and “re-wilding” the planet. Africa, they said, would be at the heart of this global effort.
But in the shadows of these promises, a quieter story is unfolding—one not told at COP summits or in glossy NGO brochures. From the plains of Tanzania to the forests of the Congo Basin, rural African communities are being evicted, fenced out, and rendered invisible. All in the name of climate action.
What looks like progress on paper often feels like dispossession on the ground.
Welcome to the age of green colonialism, where carbon credits are traded like cocoa, and land becomes valuable only when Africans are removed from it.
Land Grabs in Green Clothing
In 2022 alone, over 5 million hectares of land across Africa were acquired for carbon offset projects, conservation corridors, and reforestation schemes, according to the Land Matrix Initiative. Many of these acquisitions bypassed local consultation processes, exploiting weak land tenure systems and outdated colonial laws that still classify vast tracts of indigenous land as “state property.”
In Tanzania’s Loliondo district, more than 70,000 Maasai were forcibly evicted in 2023 to make way for a wildlife corridor funded by the UAE’s Ortello Business Corporation, under the pretext of protecting the environment. When they resisted, tear gas and live bullets followed. The Maasai had lived sustainably with wildlife for centuries, yet were branded threats to conservation.
In the Congo Basin—home to the world’s second-largest rainforest after the Amazon, millions of hectares have been earmarked for carbon credit markets, mostly managed by European or American brokers. These schemes are sold to Western companies as a way to “offset” pollution—but for forest dwellers, it means new restrictions on farming, hunting, and even spiritual rituals tied to the land.
The Carbon Credit Scam
The global carbon market is expected to be worth over $50 billion by 2030, and Africa is central to that future. Yet the structure is deeply exploitative. Here’s how it works:
- A foreign company funds a forest protection project in Africa.
- The trees are counted and turned into carbon credits.
- The credits are sold to polluters—airlines, oil giants, fashion brands—in the Global North.
- The African community is told to change its way of life—no farming, no grazing, no access.
- The real profit? It rarely reaches the people whose land is being used.
According to a 2023 Oxfam report, less than 2% of revenue from carbon offset projects in Africa ends up in the hands of local communities.
It’s a new frontier of extractivism—this time not minerals or oil, but African air and trees.
Conservation Without the People
Ironically, the African communities being displaced by these projects are often better environmental stewards than the organizations removing them. Studies by the UN’s FAO and Rights and Resources Initiative show that indigenous communities manage lands more sustainably than many state or private actors.
The Hadza of Tanzania, the Ogiek of Kenya, and the Baka of Cameroon have all demonstrated that biodiversity thrives when indigenous land rights are protected. But these truths are inconvenient for a conservation model built on fences, rangers, and fortress parks.
Even major global conservation organizations—some with deep colonial roots—continue to push for “people-free” nature preserves. As one Maasai elder put it: “They want the animals, but not the people who have lived with them for generations.”
Climate Apartheid
African countries contribute just 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet bear the brunt of climate change, droughts, floods, failed harvests. And now, in a cruel twist, they are also being asked to sacrifice land and autonomy to help the world’s largest polluters claim “net zero” status.
This is climate apartheid: where the wealthy world buys absolution by offloading the cost of climate responsibility onto the poor, often Black, rural, and powerless.
A People-Centered Climate Future
This does not mean Africa should reject conservation or climate action. Far from it. But it must lead its own environmental agenda. one rooted in justice, equity, and land sovereignty.
- Secure land tenure for indigenous and local communities must be non-negotiable.
- Carbon credit markets must be radically restructured to ensure revenue flows to those who steward the land.
- Pan-African environmental coalitions must emerge—linking governments, farmers, youth activists, and traditional leaders—to challenge foreign green agendas that sideline African voices.
And we must tell these stories—not just in policy papers, but in film, poetry, investigative journalism, and social media. Because what is at stake is more than land. It is the right of Africans to define their relationship with nature, outside of colonial frameworks—green or otherwise.
The Verdict
The climate crisis is real. But so is the risk of repeating history, where Africa becomes a backdrop for someone else’s solution.
This time, Africa must not only survive the climate emergency. It must rewrite the terms of engagement.