Climate change is changing colours innthe room as is the perception and knowledge about it. For those bending the rhetorics, people must come into the full understanding of the problems underpinning climate and how to go about it.
Unfortunate, as droughts deepen and food insecurity tightens its grip across Africa, an invisible battle is playing out one waged not with guns or armies but with misinformation.
The Battle Course of Misinformation
While climate change accelerates, a coordinated disinformation campaign is quietly shaping the continent’s energy future, spreading doubts about renewable energy’s feasibility and framing climate action as a Western ploy to hinder Africa’s industrial progress.
Unlike the blunt denialism of the past, today’s climate disinformation is more insidious. It doesn’t outright reject climate science; instead, it manipulates economic anxieties, stirs nationalist sentiment, and exploits scientific uncertainties. This narrative, backed by foreign actors and fossil fuel interests, permeates African information ecosystems through media influence, digital manipulation, and political lobbying, all with the goal of keeping the continent hooked on oil and gas.
“Africa is on the front lines of the climate crisis, but people are increasingly dismissing scientific reports as Western propaganda,” says Omar Farouk Osman, President of the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ).
“This disinformation breeds mistrust not just in science, but in media institutions leaving communities unprepared for disasters like floods and droughts.”
The Larger Implications
The stakes couldn’t be higher. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Report, disinformation especially surrounding climate change is now a top threat to global stability. Extreme weather events, from catastrophic flooding in West Africa to prolonged droughts in the Horn of Africa, are already the second-biggest short-term threat. But over the next decade, environmental risks like ecosystem collapse and resource shortages loom even larger.
Africa is particularly vulnerable. With a rapidly growing population and economies heavily dependent on agriculture, the impacts of climate change are felt in real-time. Yet, when extreme weather strikes, reliable information becomes a lifeline—and disinformation thrives in the vacuum. Inaccurate reports spread like wildfire, often faster than verified facts. This isn’t just a problem in Africa: even advanced systems can falter, as demonstrated when Los Angeles County’s emergency management office mistakenly sent an evacuation alert to 10 million residents in January 2025.
In Africa, where platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook dominate information-sharing, the problem is magnified. False claims about climate change, often backed by fossil fuel interests, spread unchecked. Meanwhile, foreign-backed narratives frame renewable energy as impractical for Africa’s development, despite evidence to the contrary. For oil giants and state actors, the goal is clear: maintain fossil fuel dependence and slow the global shift to clean energy.
The implications stretch beyond economics. As military regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger cut ties with traditional Western security partners, disinformation around climate change further fractures regional cooperation. By framing climate policies as neocolonial overreach, these regimes find a convenient narrative to justify their pivot to alternative alliances—often with countries less concerned about human rights or environmental responsibility.
Can The Media Go Above Board?
The challenge for African journalists is immense. Climate reporting requires specialized knowledge, yet many newsrooms lack the resources to train reporters in fact-checking or investigative techniques. This leaves the field open for bad actors to shape public perception. “Journalists in Nigeria and across Africa need training to counter climate disinformation, particularly on social media where falsehoods spread rapidly,” Osman explains.
The corporate role in climate disinformation cannot be ignored. Oil companies have long used sophisticated public relations campaigns to obscure the science of climate change. Today, these efforts are amplified by generative AI and online advertising systems, which allow sensationalist climate denial content to spread cheaply and efficiently. Social media companies, meanwhile, have been slow to curb the spread of climate misinformation, despite public pressure to take action.
Efforts to combat disinformation are gaining momentum. Brazil, which will host COP30 later this year, recently launched a G20 initiative to tackle climate misinformation online. The hope is that other nations will follow suit, adopting policies that hold social media platforms accountable for allowing the spread of falsehoods.
Yet, time is running out. The year 2024 was the warmest on record, a chilling reminder that climate change is not a distant threat—it is here, and it is accelerating. Snowfall, once a Christmas hallmark, is disappearing in parts of the world. Wildfires rage across California and Australia, while heatwaves scorch Asia and Europe. For Africa, the question is no longer whether the climate is changing—it’s how many lives will be lost before the truth cuts through the noise.
The battle for Africa’s energy future is not just ideological—it is strategic, calculated, and deeply entwined with global power struggles. For the people living on the frontlines, however, the issue is far simpler: Will they receive the truth in time to survive?
