The EU’s plan of an oil embargo on Russia and to reduce its gas imports from this destination is offering opportunities to African oil and gas exporters. But only to a certain extent. Limited infrastructure prevents Africa to provide a complete alternative in the short-term.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the EU is trying to diversify its energy supplies from Russia. Concerning natural gas, the EU is so dependent that it cannot afford sanctions. During the first quarter of 2021, Russia’s share of the EU market reached 46.8 %, ahead of Norway (20.5 %) and Algeria (11.6%). Russia’s grip on the market is enormous.
Gazprom is keeping prices at a historical high. Since last autumn, it doesn’t supply additional quantities on the Rotterdam spot market. It also retaliated to EU sanctions by cutting exports to Poland and Bulgaria. At any rate, during the first quarter of 2022, Russia sold less gas to the EU but cashed more money from its sales.

Ship unloading at liquefied natural gas terminal. 123rf.com

There have been attempts to diversify supplies. In 2022, the EU will be importing 15 billion cubic meters (bcm) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from United States and might raise imports by 50 bcm by 2030, according to a deal signed in March 2022.
But US supplies alone cannot solve the problem since Russian supplies are three times higher (155 bcm).
The EU is also negotiating with gas producing countries about expanding LNG supplies. Following the visit to Algiers in late February of the Italian Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio, the Italian corporation ENI signed on the 11 April an agreement with Algeria’s state-owned company Sonatrach to import up to 9 bcm/year more gas through the Trans-Mediterranean-Pipeline via Tunisia, bringing Algeria’s supply to Italy to 30 bcm in 2023.
The EU also turned to Nigeria as alternative. When the war was looming, in February, the European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager and the Nigerian Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo agreed to explore options for increased supplies of LNG to the EU.
There are also grandiose plans for the future, but they might not materialize soon. On the 17 February 2022, Nigeria, Niger and Algeria signed a common declaration for the development of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) which aims to export up to 30 bcm to the Mediterranean area. A rival project under discussion is the expansion of the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP) along the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco. But experts consider both projects as hypothetic. Their implementation could take years and the security context is extremely adverse owing to the jihadist threat in the Sahel region.

Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio with the President of the Congolese Republic Denis Sassou N’Guesso.

In April 2022, the Italian Foreign Minister, Di Maio announced another deal between ENI and Congo-Brazzaville which would allow a new LNG project to start up in 2023 with a capacity of up to 4.5 bcm a year.  During the same month, ENI inked also an agreement with Angola to import an additional 1.5 bcm/yr to help Italy’s efforts to reduce its dependence from Russia which supplied in 2021 over 40 % of its imports. The crisis could accelerate as well the implementation of projects in Mozambique and Tanzania with the construction of new LNG trains. Tanzania, which has Africa’s sixth-largest gas reserves is working with Shell to carry out the huge Lindi liquefaction project LNG scheme. Mozambique, one of the world’s most prospective gas regions with 2.8 trillion cubic meters, accounting for 1 per cent of global reserves, is another option. But the jihadist insurrection in the northern gas-rich Cabo Delgado province, hindered progress on a projected US$50 billion project, led by ENI, TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil in the Rovuma Basin. Exports should not occur before 2027. Equatorial Guinea sees itself as a regional gas hub to supply Europe while Mauritania and Senegal have high hopes for their Great Tortue Ahmeyin LNG development, writes the UK-based Africa Energy bulletin. In addition, current gas fields developments and an ambitious exploration program may allow Egypt to remain a net gas exporter from its LNG terminals.

Trans-Saharan gas pipeline.

However, there are limits to these diversification attempts. According to Benjamin Augé of the Paris-based French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), everything that can be exported on the world markets is already being exported, except Iran’s production. In other words, there cannot be a short-term solution to fully compensate a halt of gas imports from Russia.
Moreover, Africa’s potential contribution is limited compared with Russia’s reserves. According to British Petroleum’s Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2020, Russia and other CIS states accounted for 30.1 % of the world’s natural gas reserves as against 6.9% for Africa. Russia represented with 638.6 bcm 16.5 % of the world production, nearly three times more than Africa’s total of 231.2 bcm, including Algeria (81.5 bcm), Egypt (58.5 bcm), Nigeria (49.4 bcm) and Libya (13.3 bcm).
Considerable investments are required to construct pipelines to provide access to Europe. There is also a lack of investment in gas production, says Anne-Sophie Corbeau, global research scholar at the Columbia University. Africa must also liberalize the energy sector to address the infrastructural crisis. African Energy also stresses that Algeria’s gas output is hampered by significant production problems.  Algeria is confronted to difficulties to step up its production, owing to a halt of investments triggered by taxes on exceptional profits which deter companies to develop new capacities.
As a result, large amounts of extra gas are unlikely to be available in the short-to-medium term. Algeria’s gas output has even decreased from 93.8 bcm in 2018 to 81.5 bcm in 2020.

Plans to use the Medgaz pipeline to Spain whose capacity may reach 12 bcm/year are obscured by the sudden deterioration of relations between Spain and Algeria. Indeed, on the 27 April 2022, Algeria threatened Spain to stop its gas supplies through the Medgaz pipeline if Madrid sells gas to Morocco, after Spain declared on the 18 March 2022 that it was henceforth supporting Rabat’s sovereignty over the former Spanish Sahara and Madrid’s announcement that it plans to supply gas to Morocco through the Maghreb Europe Pipeline (GME). The Algerian authorities warned that any sale of Algerian gas to another destination than Spain would be a violation of the supply contract and could lead to its cancellation. Alternative sources of supply to Europe are also confronted with the lack of gasification terminals in the main EU economy, Germany, which puts limits to LNG exports to the EU.
In February 2022, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced to the Bundestag, the government’s decision to fast track the construction of the 8 bcm Brunsbüttel terminal near Hamburg, of the 10 bcm Wilhemshaven terminal and of a 12 bcm third facility called Stade Import. But the completion of these projects could take between three and five years.

Africa oil
Concerning oil, the dependency rate from Russian crude is also high with a total of 29% in 2020, according to the EU statistical office Eurostat, well head of other suppliers such as the US (9%), Norway (8%), Saudi Arabia and the UK (8% each), Kazakhstan and Nigeria (6%)
However, due to the greater flexibility of the transport of oil and petroleum products, the European Commission thinks it can diversify more easily the EU’s oil imports than the gas one, which can only be very progressive and could take years to change the trade flows. This is why, on the 4 May, it proposed a phased embargo of Russian oil, in order to tighten its sanctions package against Russia.  Despite proposals of derogations until end 2023 to the most dependent countries from Russian oil, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria are against the embargo because of its potential damage to their economies. Malta, Greece and Cyprus are concerned on the effect of the embargo would have on their oil tankers’activities.

In the event of an EU embargo, problems remain. Refineries running on a specific type of crude, such as Russia’s prime export grade Urals, need to be revamped to accommodate other types of crude including West African ones which can be blended but this can change their yields. In addition, African producers can only substitute Russia as suppliers to a certain extent. Altogether, they only account for 6.8 million barrels of the world production, well behind Russia (10.6 m. barrels).
Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, is facing serious production challenges. It had to close recently a number of oil wells to keep criminals at bay. For many months, Nigeria has produced 20 % less than capacity due to oil bunkering. At the moment, Nigeria is unable to meet its OPEC quota of 1.73 million barrels per day, according to the OPEC monthly oil market report for April 2022, Nigeria’s production only reached 1.35 mpbd in March.

Photo: 123rf.com

Libya is struggling to meet its production targets and has not yet recovered the level achieved before the destructions inflicted by NATO countries in 2011.
Soaring oil prices cast doubts about the embargo’s efficiency on Russian economy. Indeed, since last December, the Brent price rose by 68 % from 79 $/barrel to 113.3 $/b on the 6 May 2022 while the gas price more than doubled during that period.
OPEC members including African producers have no interest to increase their output because of the negative effect it could have on world prices. Moreover, OPEC members have an agreement with Russia and Central Asian partners, to constrain supply growth to 0.4 mb/d per month. In particular, Africa which produced 6.8 million barrels in 2020 or about 7.7% of the world total, behind Russia whose share on that year was 12%, faces infrastructure constraints which limit its ability to supply Europe with energy products. (Open Photo: ©khunaspix/123RF.COM)

François Misser

A small people of Mauritania compelled to change their lifestyle to survive. They once lived in the desert where they hunted wildlife and gathered wild fruits and herbs. Today they raise dromedaries.
Despite being relegated to the margins of society, the Nemadi have never lost their liberty.

To the south of Oualata, one may meet with them at a well as they water their dromedaries. If at first sight there is nothing unusual about the scene, a closer look shows a different sort of people: slender, like all the rest but their clothes are not always blue, unlike all others, and their eyes are sometimes of a clear colour, a unique characteristic. These are the few remaining signs of distinction of the Nemadi. Their history is difficult to trace since almost nobody remembers it.

The anthropological books do not clarify the origins of this people so distinct from the main groups that make up Mauri society.
In Mauritania, Berbers and Arabs are seen as making up a single society, that of the bidan (‘whites’). Their assimilation began in the XVI century when the Arab tribes of the Hassans arrived in Mauritania where they conquered and absorbed the local Berber populations. Many sections of the population from that time onwards became tributaries of the Arabs and the scourge of servile labour, a nuanced term to speak of slavery, took root in society.

The origin of the name
The Nemadi, are one of the non-slave minorities though subject to the payment of tribute, like the Imraguen, a fishing people living along the northern coast. Today, the Nemadi are pastors, devoted to raising dromedaries but, until the recent past, they were hunters of small game and gatherers of wild fruit and herbs. Their name indicates the term ‘nomads’ the etymology of which is the Greek word nomós (‘pasture’).

In the ambit of anthropology, the term is usually attributed to the populations that by pasturing in vast arid territories which they know well and whose sparse, scattered resources of water and grass, they use to their advantage, and move according to various modalities and rhythms, together with their animals.
Today, the tendency is to use the term and concept with reference to all peoples with no fixed abode, dwellers in desert places and used to wandering, even if not for pastoral reasons. This is the case with the Nemadi, also known as the N’Madi, hunters and Arabophones who, until the 1880s, lived in the area of Nema, from which, presumably, they take their name, located to the south of the well-known oasis of Oualata.

A precarious existence
Today, the Nemadi do not possess land and live in rather precarious huts built of straw and pieces of cloth, quite different from the classical khaima of the Mauri (tents woven from goat or camel hair and, today, increasingly made from white cotton). There have been no official censuses by which to obtain up-to-date figures, but it is estimated that they are few in number, amounting to only a few hundred. Among the reasons for the demographic decline and the change in lifestyle is the reduction of the game they used to hunt, especially antelopes, oryxes and addax gazelles. The drastic reduction in the numbers of wild animals was not caused by them but by a combination of factors such as indiscriminate hunting which the Mauris, spread throughout the whole country, practised in past decades using modern arms and motorised means of transport.

The large dama gazelle, for example, was once widespread all over the Sahara but is today greatly reduced in numbers. Desertification, fed by climate change, is irreversibly reducing its habitat also in Mauritania. Its hunting has been banned to protect the species, but the indiscriminate ban has ended up penalising the poorest and most fragile communities such as that of the Nemadi who once used its meat as their main source of food and now find it hard to get enough food to eat. As with all peoples who are used to moving within their surrounding space, the adoption of a sedentary life is the most one can expect from them, and perhaps the rearing of dromedaries is the lesser evil, bearing in mind that this is the most prized animal in the country and ownership of it guarantees a degree of prestige.

Cut off from everyone else
However, the Nemadi live on the margins of society. Considered ‘savages’ by the Mauri, they are relegated to a position outside the pyramid of the social classes (like the Untouchables in India), and even considered inferior to the harratin, the black Sub-Saharans.

It is said that the Nemadi were in the habit of hunting during the hottest part of the day when the prey was tired from the heat. The use of dogs (so valuable that they formed part of the marriage dowry), highly skilled in isolating and immobilising their prey, rendered the Nemadi unique and renowned in the Sub-Saharan areas.
It was perhaps due to the fact that they moved together with their dogs, animals indicated as impure and undesirable in the Arabic-Islamic world, that they became so disliked.
Like all minorities, the Nemadi have suffered discrimination and prejudice. The fact that today, little or nothing is known about them, points out two facts: their dilution within the dominating social fabric and the darkness that seems to have descended upon their civilisation. In their solitude, they have not succeeded in carving out for themselves a space of liberty in the heart of the desert.

Elena Dak/Africa

From Zimbabwe to South Africa and Kenya, Women Rangers are fiercely defending wildlife against poachers.

In their camouflage uniforms and armed with assault rifles, they scour the Phundundu Wildlife area in Zimbabwe, the natural habitat of 11,000 elephants. These are the Akashinga women rangers, a name that means courageous in the Shona language.  As part of the innovative programme that bears their name, sponsored by the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF) — a non-profit organisation dedicated to combatting poaching worldwide — these ranger women protect animals in danger of extinction. The programme was launched in 2017 by Damien Mander, a former agent of the Australian Special Operations in Iraq and founder of the IAPF. In their first four years of operations, the Akashinga women achieved an unprecedented reduction in elephant poaching estimated to have been around 80 per cent, in the Lower Zambezi Valley, the area of the world with the highest concentration of these gigantic pachyderms.

Black Mambas Anti-Poaching unit. (photo UNEP)

The goal of the IAPF is to hire a thousand ranger women full-time to protect a network of 20 nature reserves. The Akashinga programme now includes six wildlife reserves covering an area of 630,000 acres, almost 255,000 hectares. Currently, 160 full-time women rangers are completing their training in addition to the dozens already in service.
The recruits had to undergo hard training. “After studying the habits of the wildlife and the secrets of the environment – Damien Mander explains – the aspiring scouts have been trained to face the most challenging scenarios through the use of weapons, hand-to-hand combat and exercises in guerrilla action like those that may occur in the context of combatting illegal hunting”.
The Akashinga have also learned the techniques of patrolling and camouflage, the rudiments of first aid, arrest and search techniques, the acquisition of evidence, and crime scene preservation. In the imagination of those who know the history of Zimbabwe, the Akashinga, for their pride and ardour, remind them of Queen Lozikeyi Dlodlo who succeeded her husband King Lobegula in governing the Ndebele people in the late 1800s. She tenaciously opposed, both by diplomacy and military force, the occupation of the country by white colonialists who successively instituted former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

The Black Mambas Anti-Poaching Unit in Balule Reserve, South Africa. (photo UNEP)

In South Africa, in 2013, to combat poaching, the Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit was formed; it takes its name from a deadly snake, the black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis).  Its purpose is to protect species in danger of extinction such as the rhinoceros, the cheetah, and the wild hunting dog. Craig Spencer, head of Balule Game Reserve, a private reserve bordering Kruger National Park says: “When we founded Black Mamba, the original purpose was to defend the rhinos. Often, we had to deal with hunters from the surrounding villages attracted by the huge profits”. The rhino horn is, of course, very much sought after in the Orient as a natural aphrodisiac and a powerful healing medicine. It may be worth as much as $65,000 dollars per kilo.

The work of the women rangers is not only to protect wildlife but also to conduct awareness campaigns. (Photo Brent Stirton)

The work of the women Black Mamba rangers is to patrol and defend the wildlife from poachers over an area of 40,000 acres of savannah inhabited not only by rhinos but also by elephants, gazelles, giraffes and lions. “Each day, we inspect the boundaries of the reserve, check the condition of the fences and examine the health of the animals”, Leitah Michabela, one of the leaders of Black Mamba, tells us.
The work of the women rangers is not only to protect wildlife but also to conduct awareness campaigns. Leitah continues: “We want our children to be able to enjoy this natural treasure. For this reason we also go to the schools to raise awareness of the need to defend nature since this is the only way we can build a future of hope”.
On the vast savannah at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, Purity Lakana, 23, walking slowly and peering at the ground, spots the tracks of a lion that recently passed that way. Further on, she sees a group of elephants peacefully grazing. The animals wander freely between the Maasai-owned land outside the park and in the park itself.
Purity is one of a group of eight Maasai women aged from 20 to 28 and known as ‘Team Lioness’ who form part of a team of 76 rangers of the Community Wildlife Rangers (CWR) in the Ogulului-Olalarashi Group Ranch (OOGR) guarding leopards, elephants, giraffes and other wild animals in the area of 147,000 hectares (363,000 acres) surrounding the Amboseli National Park in Kenya. They are the first group of women rangers of the strictly patriarchal Maasai community. “At first, the community thought we would not succeed, believing we are weak”, says Mary Amleset, 24, during a recent foot patrol.
“They considered this to be a work just for men and so they discouraged us … but we told them: ‘No, we will succeed, and we did’”, Amleset proudly adds.

Kenyan wildlife ranger. (Photo Ifaw)

Patrick Papatiti, head of the rangers in the community of the Olgulului-Olalarashi group recalls that the idea of having an all-women group of rangers came to the fore about two years ago when he began to work for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
When the idea was suggested to the Maasai leaders, “they were a bit doubtful” Papatiti recalls. Despite their initial reluctance, each of the eight Maasai clans, after being well informed, sent representatives to be interviewed for the jobs. Two years on, Team Lioness has exceeded all expectations. The women have shown courage and ability, especially in gathering information.
The Coronavirus pandemic has halted the tourist industry in Kenya which provided an income for many Maasai living near the Park. Tourism usually provides almost 10% of the GNP of Kenya, with 2.5 million tourists visiting the country each year.
With no source of income, some members of the community resorted to poaching wild game, Papatiti told us. Today, the rangers are not only up against organised crime but also some of the community who have taken up poaching to survive.

The African continent at the centre of Worldwide Poaching
Africa is the continent most affected by the exploitation of protected species. Poaching represents a many-sided threat to biodiversity, a fundamental condition for human survival. The most sought-after items on the flora and fauna black market are elephant tusk, rhinoceros horn, rosewood, and ant-eater scales. The market for wild flora and fauna is controlled by organised crime. Africa, with its enormous quantity of wildlife, is the continent at the centre of worldwide poaching.

According to the estimates of the World Wildlife Crime Report, 157,000 elephants were killed illegally in Africa between 2010 and 2018, an average of around 17,000 each year. The area most stricken by these crimes is Southern Africa. 75% of the remaining rhinos are concentrated in South Africa alone where 86% of global confiscations by the authorities takes place and where, according to the latest data, in 2019, 600 rhinos were illegally killed. Africa is the continent most in the sights of the poachers and this is easily understood: the combination of the presence in the continent of many species such as elephants and rhinos together with unreliable systems of protection (often corrupt) creates fertile ground for the work of poachers. It has been said that corruption is effectively an accelerator of crimes against nature, gaining a foothold at each level of the chain of command and involving many different actors and not only police agents but also administrative personnel, part of the army and a small percentage of rangers.  Furthermore, we must not underestimate the spiral of crime that ties the poaching activities to some African terrorist groups: it is not unusual for the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn to be used as a means of financing armed militias and supporting the terror campaigns in some areas of the continent. (Open Photo: 123RF.COM – IFAW)

John Mutesa