Monday, 14 September 2026
13:00 to 14:00 SAST
PLAAS seminar room, Jakes Gerwel Hall, University of the Western Cape
Register on zoom
Human-made climate change undermines the ecological and socio-economic basis of African life. Addressing this global climate crisis requires a rapid and drastic reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions. But while a transition towards renewable energies has become inevitable, justice has not. In many ways, Africa is a key nodal point of world politics, with authoritarian and corrupt regimes, unending foreign interferences, significant natural resources including fossil fuel reserves, and histories of colonialism and imperialism. It is also the site of potentially immense green energy resources, which makes it ripe for the green transition. Mainstream coverage of many parts of the African continent represents it as a gold mine of conservation projects to tackle climate change and an Eldorado of renewable energy not only capable of satisfying its own energy needs but also able to export huge surpluses to the Global North. It is also held back by extractivism, fossil capitalism, resource-grabbing and (neo)colonial agendas, entrenched in the name of sustainability. A just transition in our continent and beyond must grapple with the power of fossil capital, challenge extensions of the (neo)colonial dynamics of plunder and dispossession, and confront dehumanisation through the creation of new/green sacrifice zones. Fighting for a just energy transition and climate justice equally entails exposing the policies and practices that protect global and local political elites, multinational corporations and military regimes. This seminar will challenge the deceptive narrative that obfuscates questions of ownership and sovereignty, and that masks ongoing global relations of neo-colonial domination that facilitate resource plundering, privatisation of commons, and communities’ dispossession, which consolidate undemocratic and exclusionary ways of governing the so-called transition.
Bio
Dr Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA) and the North African Food Sovereignty Network (Siyada). He is currently the North Africa Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI). His work is focused on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and energy justice in the Arab region. He is the co-editor of Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region and Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance and Solidarity.
