Tackling climate change and air pollution together could generate about US$15 in economic benefits for every US$1 invested, while preventing millions of premature deaths and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new United Nations assessment.
Africa is on track to install a record 17 gigawatts of solar power in 2026, a 45% increase from 2025, as distributed solar expands rapidly across the continent, according to a new analysis by energy think tank Ember and the African Tech Futures Lab.
South Africa’s Constitutional Court has blocked Shell’s plans to conduct offshore oil exploration along the country’s ecologically sensitive Wild Coast, delivering a major setback to the oil giant after years of legal challenges by local communities and environmental groups.
KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda’s oil developments are putting wetlands, wildlife and the communities that depend on them at risk through siltation, blocked waterways, floods,noise and air pollution, according to a new report by the Africa Institute for Energy Governance.
Africa risks replacing its historical dependence on raw-material exports with a new form of digital dependence unless it deliberately invests in knowledge creation, research, innovation and industrial capacity, Prof. Sergey D. Bodrunov has warned.
We investigate land, climate, extractives, rights and power from the ground up — and follow the stories others ignore.
Tackling climate change and air pollution together could generate about US$15 in economic benefits for every US$1 invested, while preventing millions of premature deaths and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new United Nations assessment.
Africa is on track to install a record 17 gigawatts of solar power in 2026, a 45% increase from 2025, as distributed solar expands rapidly across the continent, according to a new analysis by energy think tank Ember and the African Tech Futures Lab.
South Africa’s Constitutional Court has blocked Shell’s plans to conduct offshore oil exploration along the country’s ecologically sensitive Wild Coast, delivering a major setback to the oil giant after years of legal challenges by local communities and environmental groups.
KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda’s oil developments are putting wetlands, wildlife and the communities that depend on them at risk through siltation, blocked waterways, floods,noise and air pollution, according to a new report by the Africa Institute for Energy Governance.
In the middle of the savannah grasslands, a herd of elephants graze by the roadside inside Uganda’s largest national park, Murchison Falls Park MFNP. Giraffes, elephants, bushbucks, and buffalo strut across the vast expanses of this savannah. A few meters away, the noise of bulldozers clearing an oil drilling site jars the calm of a sunny June day, as French oil giant TotalEnergies’ long-delayed Tilenga crude oil project roars to life.
As China and other global powers sink investments to exploit Africa’s vast critical minerals needed to power the global green energy transition, some countries are increasingly bearing the environmental cost, health risks and social disruptions of the mineral rush.
As global energy markets are rocked by conflict and geopolitical instability, a new report by Oil Change International and Power Shift Africa finds that oil and gas production has failed to deliver economic development in Africa’s producing countries and is instead deepening vulnerability, inequality, and dependence.
KAMPALA Uganda – A foggy dawn is just giving way to daylight in an upscale suburb east of Kampala. Patience Apolot, a young accountant, joins the queue outside a mobile coffee booth for something once considered very rare in this east African nation: a morning cup of coffee.
In-depth reporting on land, climate, extractives, human rights and the forces shaping Indigenous communities across Africa.
In the mist-wreathed highlands of eastern Uganda lies a massive solitary mountain range. Its highest point, locally known as Wagagai, and its forested surroundings is the latest front line between an indigenous community fighting to protect their ancestral land and the government trying to preserve one of its last remaining natural forests .
For more than a year, activists successfully pressured dozens of large banks and insurers to pull their support of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP. In March, the project finally secured long-delayed financing from syndicate banks to fund the development of a 900-mile crude oil pipeline from Ugandan oil fields to the Tanzanian port city of Tanga. Now activists are trying to stall the project in a new way: in local and regional courts.It is the latest indication that the $5 billion project will continue to face challenges.
Hoima, Uganda – When Uganda discovered commercially viable oil reserves nearly two decades ago, Hoima district became the center of attention. Hotels sprang up almost overnight, land prices skyrocketed, and residents believed that prosperity was finally within reach. “People thought oil would transform our lives,” recalls John Mugisa, a hotel owner in Hoima town. “We were preparing for the boom.”
Community-based zero waste systems offer a cheap, fast way to cut methane emissions and create good jobs. Yet they are all too often overlooked in favour of capital-intensive, profit-driven infrastructure. At COP30 climate talks in Belem, there is an opportunity to get money flowing to the people getting results on the ground.
It’s mid-morning at Itinga village, in Kenya’s Laikipia County, about 300km north of the capital, Nairobi. As the sun starts warming down onto the plains of Leparua Conservancy, Lemerwes Ntiti stands with a faded gaze at his goats as they graze on what’s left of the grass and shrubs after a long drought that saw them lose pasture and water as well.
Following Verra's decision to re-certify the Northern Kenya Rangelands soil Carbon Project despite an Isiolo court ruling raising questions over the legal basis of some participating conservancies. I revisited an interview I conducted with climate justice and carbon markets expert Adrien Tofighi-Niaki www.aniaki.work in March. In this conversation, he explains what the case means for carbon markets, rights of Indigenous peoples and the future of carbon offsetting in Africa.
-Nairobi, Kenya – For years, the Kenyan government has sought to protect the Mau Forest, spanning around 4,000 hectares across several counties, from encroachment and destruction by people who fell trees to sell for charcoal and firewood. But human rights groups have said these efforts have been marred by human rights violations that are yet to stop.
Billions of investments into mining projects have breathed new life into Uganda’s once-neglected Karamoja region, creating thousands of jobs in mineral-rich heartlands near the Kenyan border. But the investment rush has also brought new problems, fueling environmental degradation, rights violations, and land grabbing, threatening livelihoods of millions of Indigenous Karamojong people.
In recent years, torrents of muddy water have torn through villages in Uganda’s Kasese district sweeping away homes, bridges, and farmland, uprooting entire communities. Kasese’s floods are a mirror of a nation caught between extreme weather events, struggling to adapt with scarce resources. Now, frontline communities living at the foothills of the Rwenzori are turning to Indigenous knowledge in order to adapt to and mitigate recurring climate-induced floods.
As a young man, Olekesi Koisa would always see his father study the stars, birds, and animals both domestic and wild; and would send a word to their village and beyond that there would be rain or drought, and that people should prepare for an impending disaster in the case that it was extreme.
Every morning, 40-year old John Kato scours through the pages of Ugandan local newspapers for updates about the imminent introduction of electric buses. It’s a ritual he does every day ever since he dropped plans to leave his job as a bus driver in the city to try farming.
Mazingira is a Nubian women’s group that was formed to empower Nubian women on environmental conservation through sustainable urban farming as well as the importance of food sovereignty-regularly expressed as the right and responsibility of people to have access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods.
When Jealousy Mugisa Mulimba, a 52-year-old father of nine in Uganda’s oil-rich Buliisa district, was informed he would need to move his family from his ancestral home because French oil giant TotalEnergies needed his three acres to build their central processing facility, he was reasonable. He didn’t put up a fight.He asked that the company give him three acres nearby; somewhere out of the way of the facility, but still near the place he’d always called home, the health facilities he and his family rely upon, and his kids’ schools.
KAMPALA, Uganda —Last week(July19),West African leaders of the Economic Community of West African States ECOWAS signed an intergovernmental agreement in Freetown, Sierra Leone, formally backing Africa's most ambitious fossil fuel project, the African Atlantic Gas Pipeline AAGP also previously known as the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline. The agreement moves the project from years of planning towards implementation by creating the legal framework for participating countries to cooperate. The proposed offshore natural gas pipeline will stretch between 5,600 and 6,800 kilometers along the Atlantic coast, connecting Nigeria with Morocco through 13 West African countries.
Ugandan farmers have filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England against a UK-registered company building the 900-mile oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean port city of Tanga, in what lawyers describe as a first-of-its-kind attempt to apply Ugandan climate, environmental, and constitutional law in a foreign court.
Earlier this year,I interviewed Richard Pearshouse, Director of the Environment and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch about the East African Crude Oil Pipeline EACOP project, the role of Chinese financiers, and the broader implications for Uganda’s development and environment.
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), has been informed about the arbitrary arrest and detention of four young environmental human rights defenders, Mr Ssembalirwa Aniwaly, Mr Mugoya Hassan, Mr Okanya Ivan and Mr Ariong Arone Patrick, members of the youth-led movement Rooted in Resistance, which advocates for greater accountability regarding Uganda’s natural resources and for the protection of the environment.
In an era of increasing environmental degradation and human rights violations, traditional legal systems are often unable to fully address global injustices.The Court of the Citizens of the World seeks to bridge this gap through non-binding “blueprint trials” designed to spotlight rights violations and push for accountability.
KAMPALA, Uganda — Civic space is shrinking across East Africa, with arrests, intimidation and legal pressure increasingly used against activists.Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders told Indigenous Times that NGO shutdowns and intimidation of activists in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya show a growing regional pattern of repression, with serious risks for human rights defenders. She says governments in the region appear to be adopting similar tactics to curb dissent, while international human rights standards continue to offer defenders a framework and hope despite growing global backsliding.
The sun is setting into the beautiful skyline that decorates Kenya’s Narok County as Lilian Saruni brings back her goats from the grazing fields for the night near her homestead at Nkorienito village.
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