Over the past few years, the phrase “just transition” has travelled across climate policy corridors, from international negotiations to national energy plans. It suggests a promise: of fairness, of repair, of moving away from fossil fuels without leaving anyone behind. But beneath the appealing rhetoric lies a deeper unease, particularly in the Global South. Who is defining what’s “just”? And more importantly, who benefits?

The second webinar in the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTAGlobal Tapestry of Alternatives)Series turned its focus to Africa, with interventions from Alex Hotz, Hamza Hamouchene, Hibist Kassa, and Muhammed Lamin Saidykhan, moderated by Vasna Ramasar. Speakers highlighted that what is being called a “green transition” is in fact a rebranded form of extractivism—still centered on profit, control, and dispossession, only now wrapped in green rhetoric.

Hamza Hamouchene (TNI) underscored the links between colonialism, war, and resource extraction: “We cannot speak about colonialism—green or otherwise—while turning a blind eye to the genocide in Palestine, or the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, many of which are directly tied to resource control and the critical raw materials needed for the so-called green transition.” His words captured the urgency of situating energy debates within broader struggles against colonial violence. This session built on the previous webinar, which warned that the “just transition” risks becoming a “just cover”—an alibi for capitalist expansion and global supply chains under the banner of climate action. By grounding the discussion in African contexts, panelists showed how, from the DRC to South Africa, large-scale infrastructure and energy projects often bypass the communities they claim to serve. Rather than centering people, these projects treat them as afterthoughts or obstacles.

In her introduction, Vasna Ramasar emphasized the need to locate the just transition within the colonial-capitalist project, cautioning that without this, inequality will simply be reproduced in greener form. Across the continent, mineral-rich lands are being carved up for lithium and cobalt; wind and solar farms replace pastoralist grazing lands; and new debts are accumulated to finance infrastructure aimed at export markets. These dynamics position Africa not as a sovereign agent but once again as a supplier of resources to global powers—continuing a familiar neo-colonial pattern. The webinar foregrounded critical insights and lived experiences from African activists, researchers, and organizers. It traced how Africa’s supposed role in the “green future” is shaped by global interests, compromised governance, and persistent inequalities, while also highlighting how movements are responding with defiance, creativity, and hope.

In many ways, the so-called green transition has merely shifted the coordinates of the old colonial project. As speakers in the webinar made clear, Africa is not transitioning; it is being transitioned. And the contours of this process look disturbingly familiar. Where once gold, ivory, and rubber were extracted, today it is lithium, cobalt, hydrogen, and other “critical raw materials” driving the scramble. The vocabulary may have changed—now framed in terms of sustainability, climate action, and decarbonisation—but the underlying logic of dispossession and plunder remains much the same.

Hamza Hamouchene captured this continuity with stark clarity: “What is being framed as a climate solution is in fact another form of colonial extraction; this time in the name of decarbonisation. We are not seeing a move away from extractivism, but an intensification of it.” He underscored how responses to the climate crisis are being determined by actors whose analysis is structurally biased, overlooking class, race, gender, and power. For Hamouchene, this represents a new form of environmental orientalism—a worldview that once again positions Africa as a site of sacrifice zones, its resources extracted to fuel the prosperity of others. Familiar players dominate this landscape: EU agencies, the World Bank, USAID, GIZ, and AFD. But these institutions not only shape policies and financing—they also influence research agendas, knowledge production, and even the training of young environmental activists, perpetuating a worldview that legitimizes green colonialism.

The discussion grounded these critiques in vivid examples. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, rich in cobalt and copper, multinational corporations are tightening their hold through mining deals sanctioned by domestic elites. In Morocco and occupied Western Sahara, vast solar parks and green projects are being imposed through land grabs and forced displacement. South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Implementation Plan (JET-IP) was cited as another cautionary tale. As Alex Hotz from the WoMin Alliance explained, billions of dollars are being channeled into infrastructure projects that serve private corporations rather than communities. “We are building infrastructure for private companies to profit from, not for communities,” she observed. “This isn’t a people’s transition: it’s a private one.”

Nor are Western powers the only actors driving this extractive rush. China, Russia, the UAE, and Türkiye are also deepening their presence, presenting themselves as partners while structuring deals that entrench dependency and debt. Hibist Kassa pointed to Zimbabwe’s Bikita Lithium mine, once controlled by Rio Tinto and BP, later taken over by a Chinese company after the pandemic. Far from embodying South–South solidarity, this case exemplifies how new players reproduce the same dynamics of land conflict, dispossession, and environmental harm.

The complicity of African elites was another recurring theme. As Vasna Ramasar stressed, “It’s not just external forces, we have our own actors on the continent who are enabling this model, often in the name of progress.” The panelists urged audiences to move beyond simplistic North–South binaries and ask: who within the South is actually benefiting?

The extractive logics of green colonialism extend beyond mining and energy. Industrial agriculture, corporate seed monopolies, and so-called climate-smart farming initiatives are reshaping African food systems under the guise of sustainability. Patent regimes and GMOs undermine seed sovereignty while sidelining agroecological alternatives. “We must also talk about the colonisation of agriculture and food systems,” Hotz insisted, “and how seed sovereignty and food justice are being compromised in this transition.”

Some initiatives, like the African Union’s Green Mineral Strategy or Zimbabwe’s attempts to process lithium domestically, might appear to break with raw resource dependency. Yet, as Hibist cautioned, these efforts remain trapped in the same development logic: communities are denied the right to refuse, land injustices persist, and ecological devastation is justified in the name of growth.

What emerges is a sobering picture of a continent caught in a double bind—pressured to supply the world’s clean energy future while being denied the sovereignty to chart its own path. As the speakers underscored, green colonialism is not just a metaphor but a material reality rooted in debt traps, resource grabs, and enduring global inequality. Far from promising liberation, the green transition risks reinscribing Africa’s subordinate role in the global order, unless struggles for justice, autonomy, and community-led alternatives can chart a different course.

A key thread running through the session was the crisis of the postcolonial African state: its capacity, its capture, and its complicity. As speaker after speaker emphasized, the geopolitics of green colonialism cannot be understood without grappling with the internal contradictions of governance in Africa. Muhammed Lamin reminded the audience that “Africa has been divided into 55 nation-states, and this fragmentation severely weakens our ability to bargain collectively. Despite holding nearly 40% of the world’s critical minerals necessary for global decarbonisation, we remain disorganised and undercut by internal divisions, corruption, and poor leadership. This disunity is being exploited by the very actors responsible for our predicament.” In other words, fragmentation and elite capture make it easier for external powers to dictate the terms of the so-called transition.

Hibist Kassa, researcher at the Institute for Environmental Futures at the University of Leicester, expanded on this diagnosis by pointing to how decades of liberalisation have hollowed out the very capacity of states. “We are left with states that no longer govern, but merely rule,” she observed. Regulatory agencies are stripped of resources, monitoring is minimal, and policy-making is increasingly dictated by donors and investors. She highlighted the African Mining Vision, —once touted as a progressive continental framework—as a telling case: meaningful implementation has been absent, while consultation tools like Free, Prior, and Informed Consent remain largely symbolic. Even initiatives that begin with good intentions often end up hijacked by global capital, as illustrated by the EU’s recent plan to fund a lithium corridor between South Africa and the DRC. In practice, this bypasses local decision-making and ties African resources more tightly to European industrial strategies. “Even when there are attempts at cooperation between countries, like DRC and Zambia, these are overtaken by external actors who fund the process and steer it to serve their own interests,” she concluded.

The discussion also underscored the deep injustices of energy poverty amid resource wealth. Alex Hotz reminded participants that more than 600 million Africans still live without access to electricity, yet the continent is pressured to decarbonize primarily to serve the Global North. She warned that South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Implementation Plan (JET-IP) exemplifies this distorted logic: it channels billions into infrastructure that entrenches debt and dependency while bypassing essential public services. In Mpumalanga, she noted, communities are being saddled with new debts for projects that deliver profits to private companies, not hospitals, schools, or affordable transport. “Africans are being asked to take on debt for a transition that we are not even benefiting from. It’s a scam; one dressed in green.” These critiques echoed themes from earlier GTA webinars, which exposed how “just transitions” often mask the continuation of neoliberal development models: market-first approaches, top-down governance, and the systematic exclusion of frontline communities. In the African context, however, the crisis of the state sharpened these critiques. Here, the problem is not only limited capacity but also a profound lack of political will. Many ruling elites are deeply enmeshed in global circuits of capital, benefitting personally from extractive projects. As Vasna Ramasar put it plainly: “We must be honest: our states are not innocent. They are captured. And many of our elites are complicit in green colonialism.”

Examples from South Africa drove the point home. Hotz described how the government’s Economic Recovery and Development Plan has paved the way for seizing thousands of hectares of community land for hydrogen plants and lithium mines in the Northern Cape. Despite chronic power shortages, over 80% of the energy from such projects is earmarked for export—fueling ships and planes rather than lighting South African homes. This contradiction illustrates how the state, instead of addressing domestic needs, prioritizes global markets and elite interests.

This uncomfortable reality led the discussion to a crucial question: if the state cannot be trusted to deliver a just transition, where do we turn? The answers did not come from despair but from defiance. Speakers stressed the need for movement-building, grassroots resistance, and the creation of democratic spaces from below. Only through autonomous organizing, they argued, can communities reclaim power and ensure that transitions serve the people rather than perpetuate cycles of dependency and dispossession.

As the webinar drew to a close, the conversation shifted toward resistance and alternatives. If green colonialism is the diagnosis, what strategies of resistance are emerging from Africa? What political, cultural, and movement-building responses can chart a different path? Hamza Hamouchene was clear: the capitalist system feeding the Global North must be dismantled, and walls between movements broken down. “People are never passive victims,” he reminded. “When faced with injustice—environmental, economic, political—people resist. They organize. They rise up again and again. They may be repressed or defeated temporarily, but they do not remain silent. This is what we have witnessed in Palestine and so many other places worldwide.”

Muhammed Lamin Saidykhan of CAN International added: “They’ve divided us into gender activists, climate activists, land activists. But without unifying our strength, power, and expertise, we will not be able to change this. We must organize aggressively and deliberately—sharpening our analysis, building cross-border alliances, and reclaiming sovereignty politically, economically, and ecologically. Only then can we shape our own future, rather than be sacrificed for someone else’s transition.” This call for unity echoed across the panel. Speakers urged alliances among trade unions, environmentalists, indigenous peoples, and peasant communities in an era of climate apartheid. Alex Hotz stressed the need to engage with concrete concerns about jobs and dignity: “If we’re not answering the real questions peasants, workers, and communities have, we will not win them to our vision. Without their full participation, any imagined transition will remain partial and disconnected.” For her, resistance must link survival struggles with broader issues like extractivism, agriculture, debt, and public services—ensuring “green jobs” are public, socially useful, and not just private profit schemes.

Hibist Kassa emphasized challenging knowledge hierarchies and technocratic governance: “Expertise is often the quiet vehicle of dispossession. We must question whose knowledge counts and ensure that communities shape the terms of debate.” She cited Mali’s rejection of GMOs through popular deliberation as an example of collective agency in action. The conversation ended with a broader call to reimagine the postcolonial African state—not as an extension of colonial or neoliberal orders, but as a site of popular power and pan-African solidarity. As Hibist quoted Kwame Ninsin: “Our elites don’t govern, they rule. And they rule in service of accumulation, not liberation.”

The so-called “just transition” is often anything but just. Instead of dismantling the structures that have long enabled colonial plunder, economic dependency, and ecological violence, it risks reinforcing them under a fresh coat of green paint. Across the discussions, there was a clear warning that Africa’s future is being brokered in boardrooms and summits where African communities are absent. From the scramble for critical minerals to debt-driven transition plans, and from the silence around land and food systems to the erasure of indigenous and peasant knowledges and cultures; the speakers laid bare a sobering reality. The current energy transition is not a break from history, but a continuation of colonial and capitalist logic. And yet, what rang through with equal clarity was that resistance is alive. Whether in popular struggles against mining and land grabs, trade union critiques of energy privatisation, or the cultural and intellectual defiance against technocratic rule, African voices are not only exposing the contradictions but also reclaiming agency. As Vasna Ramasar aptly closed: “This is about recognising who’s at the table and who must be at the table. And it is also about realising that perhaps we need to build new tables altogether.”