In March, environmentalists launched an unprecedented legal case charging French oil giant TotalEnergies with greenwashing. Despite marketing itself as a green company, TotalEnergies has invested heavily in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, an infamous project in Uganda that’s come to symbolize Western hypocrisy.
Antony Blinken was in Africa this week for a three-country tour, where he unveiled the Biden administration’s new approach for deepening ties with African nations. The strategy seems to hit all the right notes. But to implement it, the U.S. will have to break long-established habits in its relations with the continent.
As inflation rates spike and interest rates rise, many countries are facing looming sovereign debt crises. A mechanism like the G-20’s Common Framework for Debt Treatments, aimed at addressing what could become a global debt crisis, is becoming more important than ever—but to be effective it needs to address major shortcomings.