Accra, Ghana//-(CAJ News) – ACROSS Africa, a growing number of young people and communities are questioning whether the continent’s vast natural wealth has become a source of prosperity for Africans—or a driver of displacement, poverty and migration.
From Ghana’s goldfields to Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta and the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), communities say the pattern is painfully familiar: valuable resources are extracted, profits flow largely to corporate and financial centres abroad, while polluted rivers, degraded farmland, abandoned mine waste and broken livelihoods remain behind.
In Nigeria, oil majors including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni and TotalEnergies have operated across the Niger Delta.
Communities in Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta and Akwa Ibom states have for decades reported oil spills, gas flaring and environmental degradation affecting fishing and agriculture.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that decades of petroleum operations had contaminated Ogoniland’s soil, groundwater, creeks and mangroves.
In one community, benzene in drinking water was measured at more than 900 times World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.
UNEP warned that full ecological recovery could take 25 to 30 years. (UNEP – UN Environment Programme)
“This is where economic troubles and migration begin,” Amara Adeyemi of Otuabagi, Bayelsa State, told CAJ News Africa on Thursday.
“When farming and fishing disappear, people lose not only income, but their reason to remain. Communities need compensation, restoration and opportunities—not promises after the damage is done.”
Chinonso Lawal, who studied at the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, said environmental destruction had contributed to rising food insecurity and youth migration.
She recalled friends leaving Nigeria through Libya towards Europe.
Oil pollution can be devastating because crude oil coats water surfaces, reducing oxygen available to aquatic life, contaminates fish and damages fishing equipment.
On land, hydrocarbons can poison soil and groundwater, while gas flaring releases pollutants that can damage air quality, vegetation and human health.
UNEP found that oil contamination in Ogoniland had severely affected mangroves, crops and fisheries.
Ghana faces similar concerns around mining communities.
Areas including Tarkwa, Prestea, Bogoso and Bibiani have experienced the physical transformation associated with large-scale mineral extraction.
Esi Owusu of Kumasi argues that communities cannot build sustainable futures when productive land is replaced by pits, waste rock and contaminated areas.
“Would we expect farmers to prosper on land that has been degraded?” she asked. “The answer is no. Development must include land reclamation, fair compensation, local employment, skills transfer and infrastructure that remains after the minerals are gone.”
Historical mining names cited in discussions of Africa’s extractive legacy include Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP), Anglo American, Lonrho and Lonmin.
An independent assessment found serious environmental and human-rights impacts around Ashanti and Western provinces’ mines, including contaminated rivers, mine waste, flooding and threats to food gardens and drinking water.
The DRC presents perhaps the starkest contemporary test.
Its cobalt, copper, coltan, lithium and other strategic minerals are essential to modern technologies and the global energy transition.
Yet Amnesty International and the DRC-based Initiative pour la Bonne Gouvernance et les Droits Humains have documented forced evictions and abuses linked to industrial cobalt and copper mining, including communities being pushed from homes and farmland.
Human Rights Watch has likewise reported serious pollution risks associated with oil operations in coastal DRC, including oil leaks, gas flaring and waste burning, warning of risks to surrounding communities.
Africans’ demand is not simply to stop foreign investment, but they want responsible investment which comes with technology transfer, African ownership and participation, decent jobs, environmental guarantees, transparent revenue-sharing, local processing, skills development and enforceable rehabilitation obligations.
African countries argue that extraction should leave more than holes, waste dumps and memories.
They insist that the measure of successful investment should be whether communities can continue farming, fishing, educating their children and building businesses long after the last barrel of oil or tonne of ore has left.
Africa does not need its resources to remain underground.
It needs resource development that leaves wealth, skills, technology, infrastructure, restored ecosystems and self-reliant communities behind.
By Akani Chauke in Johannesburg & Russell Adadevoh in Accra, CAJ News
