African Energy Chamber founder and executive director NJ Ayuk is tired of European and American green energy pontificators demanding that Africa forgo developing its oil, coal, natural gas, and even nuclear resources. Maybe that’s why Ayuk has led a delegation to Moscow to secure energy partnerships.

An AEC press release notes that the visit aligns with its goal of attracting diverse energy investments to meet Africa’s energy needs and augments ongoing efforts to increase Russian involvement in the continent’s energy market. Devdiscourse says that Russia has been expanding its influence with African nations with a multifaceted approach that spans oil, gas, and nuclear energy sectors.

The AEC-led visit to Moscow aimed to enhance cooperation, attract Russian investments in Africa’s vast energy markets, and build long-term partnerships to serve both African development goals and Russian strategic interests.

Last September, Russian multinational energy corporation Lukoil signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Republic of Congo’s ministry of hydrocarbons to enhance cooperation in oil exploration and production.

In Tanzania, Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom secured a deal to explore and produce natural gas, with an emphasis on compressed natural gas. The partnership provides Gazprom access to East Africa’s untapped gas potential while deepening binational commercial ties.

Russia’s nuclear power company Rosatom is currently in discussions with Rwanda to establish a nuclear science and technology center and potentially build a nuclear power plant, a project that would also involve local capacity building, specialized training, and technology transfer. Africans believe Rosatom’s strategy will both provide advanced nuclear technology and enable African countries to diversify their energy sources.

Rosatom has also signed an MoU with Guinea-Conakry to develop floating nuclear power plants; three cooperation agreements with Mali to explore construction of a low-power nuclear plant; and a nuclear cooperation deal with the Republic of Congo. These and other African nations are looking to nuclear power as an option to meet its growing energy needs in addition growing domestic oil and gas production.

The Russians are already committed to a strong presence at the AEC-sponsored African Energy Week in Cape Town starting on September 29. The Russians intend to strengthen bilateral ties with various African nations and to position the Russian Federation as a reliable partner in both traditional energy resources and emerging technologies like nuclear power.

Russia will have to navigate geopolitical dynamics and international competition to ensure that its investments will deliver long-term benefits for both the Federation and Africa’s energy future. As for the U.S., the first Trump administration largely ignored its opportunities to invest in African energy development, but the Biden administration was very active.

The problem, though, was that Biden’s 2022 U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa focused on a “just” energy transition that only supported energy efficiency (in a continent drastically short of electricity), renewable energy, and gas-to-power infrastructure – not oil and gas exploration and development, not nuclear energy development.

The Biden document promised to harness U.S. and African private sector investment “to support the energy transition,” enable energy diversification, and promote energy security, climate objectives, and economic development. To a continent starved for energy development, the primary emphasis on “climate impacts” and “sustainable development” signaled that bringing electricity to 600 million Africans without regular access was not a high priority.

The U.S. and the Europeans appear to have forgotten the words of Gro Harlem Brundtland, chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development, in the Foreword to the seminal report, “Our Common Future.” Brundtland, while calling for sustainable development as a global goal, admitted that “sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life.”

What Africans have come around to demand is far more than what Europe and the U.S. have wanted to deliver – “an assurance that those poor get their fair share of the resources required to sustain … [economic] growth.” They just want the freedom to do it themselves.

In their zeal to reach the mythical global “net zero” carbon emissions, the West demanded that Africa, which generates less than 3% of world carbon dioxide emissions, sacrifice its abundant oil and gas resources while building “renewable” projects to generate carbon credits for the benefit of European industry.

Relying solely on this multi-billion-dollar bribe would leave African nations with intermittent energy from wind turbines and solar panels that have only a 20-year lifespan. Moreover, both require backup energy sources to ensure uninterrupted electric service. And Africans today manufacture very few solar panels and turbine blades.

Even with massive “carbon credits” purchased from energy-starved Africa, a dozen European Union nations are on track to miss their own national climate targets, and many have returned to burning coal to meet short-term energy needs. Many European economies are in trouble thanks to high energy costs and an auto industry increasingly unable to compete with subsidized, thus cheaper, Chinese electric vehicle imports.

The Ayuk-led mission to Moscow has been quite productive for the African delegation. The Russian Export Center’s REC Group has organized several business missions to African countries later in 2025, with AEC and Cape Town-based Energy Capital & Power, Africa’s leading energy investment platform, as REC’s main partners.

When Ayuk pointed out that only one bank was willing to finance coal industry expansion, REC senior vice president Nikita Gusakov said the Exim Bank of Russia would have “no problem” financing African coal projects. Another Russian group pledged to bring to realization several central African development projects.

Ayuk, like many other Africans, has concluded that aid cannot make poor countries rich. He strongly supports Africa’s oil and gas industry as a free-market solution that creates pathways for Africans to help themselves. More than generating revenue for African governments (as with carbon credits, for example), empowering Africans is AEC’s top goal.

Which makes it even stranger that the former Soviet Union, rather than the U.S. and EU nations with centuries-old free market economies, may be more willing to aid African empowerment.

This article first appeared in RealClearEnergy and is reproduced here by the author’s permission.

Featured image by Dall-E/ChatGPT.