UK Court Cannot Decide Uganda’s, Africa’s Energy Future

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• Let Uganda, Africans Make Their Energy Choices

Four Ugandan farmers have launched a legal challenge in the UK High Court against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), seeking to apply Ugandan constitutional, environmental and climate law to EACOP Ltd., the project’s UK-registered operating company.

Filed mere months before the pipeline is expected to begin transporting Uganda’s first crude exports, the case argues that the 1,445-km pipeline breaches Uganda’s legal protections and asks the English court to prevent the project from becoming operational.

This is clearly nothing but the latest example of foreign-backed litigation targeting strategically important African energy projects through overseas courts. And it comes at a time when Uganda and Tanzania stand on the threshold of transformational economic opportunity.

The African Energy Chamber (AEC) maintains that decisions about Uganda’s energy future should be made in Uganda – not in London.

And the timing is no coincidence. After years of permitting, financing and construction, EACOP is approaching one of its most important milestones.

Yet just as Uganda prepares to become an oil-producing nation, another legal challenge has emerged – this time asking a British court to determine whether one of Africa’s most important infrastructure projects should proceed.

“This is colonialism 2.0,” says NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the AEC. “For generations, Africa was told what resources it could exploit and how it should develop.

Today, some of those same pressures are being repackaged through foreign-funded litigation and ideological campaigns that seek to dictate Africa’s energy choices from thousands of kilometres away. UK courts should not determine Uganda’s energy future. Ugandans should.