Two visions of climate colonialism in African gas producers: Europe’s demand for LNG and the danger of stranded assets

Jesse Salah Ovadia

Review of International Political Economy, 2025, vol. 32, issue 6, 2311-2331

Abstract: Wealthy countries and capital markets have moved to end support of new fossil fuel projects in the Global South, while simultaneously encouraging the export of African liquid natural gas (LNG) to meet Europe’s short-term need. While some have suggested denying African states the opportunity to exploit gas is a form of climate colonialism, I demonstrate that a more insidious expression of climate colonialism would be to replicate colonial and neo-colonial patterns of enclave extraction that direct new infrastructure spending toward facilitating the export of raw materials. Using a model of global LNG demand combined with a deeper dive into the case of Mozambique that was created for the African Climate Foundation (ACF), I explore the financial risks for African LNG projects and examine the financial outcomes at the project level for LNG assets across Africa. Connecting the risk of stranded assets to debates around resource-based development, structural transformation, and climate colonialism, I argue that while the conditions for gas investment seem favorable in the short- and medium-terms, new LNG projects promoted by Europe since 2022 involve considerable risk of stranded assets, lost opportunities, and underdevelopment for African nations in the long-term.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2025.2532617

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