By Tracy Makheti
We hit the ground running this year – challenging and disrupting TotalEnergies for their deceptive hijacking of the beautiful game, football. We’re going to keep pressing the Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) President, Patrice Motsepe, to heed the voices of thousands who signed the petition, millions that watched the videos and football fans on the ground in Abidjan who we spoke to last week. The message is clear: kick polluters out of advertising at sports events to hide their destruction.
This all takes a lot of work; we’ll keep bravely taking action on the ground and online – and if you can help us keep doing that by giving whatever you can it’ll help us be bigger and bolder as we push back against big oil companies.
Large or small – your donation will go towards our campaigns to get oil companies to stop using things like AFCON as cover for their operations in Africa – and our efforts to demand they stop new drilling – destroying communities and our environment.
Dirty oil giants like Total keep racking up millions in profit while our people and planet suffer. Just last week, they announced their 2023 earnings and guess what – they made their biggest profit ever. The oil and gas giant earned $21.4 billion in net income last year. And who benefits – African communities or their shareholders?
Here’s what else happened in 2023:
Extreme flooding and mudslides from Tropical Cyclone Freddy affected 2.8 million people in Southern Africa, killing at least 890 and leaving more than 184,000 people displaced.
The horn of Africa continued to face its worst drought in 40 years after its 6th consecutive failed rainy season leaving at least 20 million people at risk of acute food insecurity and famine.
9 Ugandan student climate activists were arrested for protesting against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project (EACOP), that will displace over 100,000 people in Uganda and Tanzania. A project that TotalEnegries has a 62% stake in.
Storm Daniel devastated Libya leaving 4,300 people killed and more than 50,000 homes destroyed.
More than 3,000 people were killed in disastrous flash floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
Events like these will only get worse if we keep letting fossil fuel companies get away with drilling for more new oil and gas, driving us deeper into the climate crisis. The time to supercharge our efforts is now. We can’t allow these destructive fossil fuel companies to hide their climate crimes behind deceptive greenwashing tactics any longer. Together we have the power to permanently drive them out of our game and our continent. We have the solutions – a transition to wind, solar and big oil paying for the damages they have caused. The answers are unfolding across African cities and villages, it’s time to open our eyes and embrace them.
Will you give anything you can and support us as we reach out to CAF for a response and urge them to make 2024 the final year fossil fuel companies sponsor AFCON?
