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I have just completed reading the 2025 Saharawi Observatory for Natural Resources and Environmental (SONREP) Report, titled “Sustainable for Whom? Western Sahara Renewable Energy and Environmental Justice under Occupational.”
Its forty three pages are on the exploitation and plundering of the Western Sahara (WS) renewable energy, and its disastrous effects on the Sahrawi people.
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While reading the Report, an Edo proverb flashed through my mind: “Whereever the Whiteman (European imperialist) steps his feet, calamity and disaster are what follows”. I was also reminded of Walter Rodney’s characterisation of colonialism as: “a one-armed bandit”; and Frantz Fanon’s depiction of colonialism as “violent in its natural state.”
The Edo proverb is relevant here because it was Spain that first colonised WS, while the West, particularly United States (US) and France, are largely responsible for Morocco’s continued occupation of WS, also known as Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The general activities of Morocco in WS concretely capture the Rodney and Fanon metaphors on colonialism.
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But Europe’s colonies have certain advantages. The “prevailing ‘civilized ethics’” of Europe prevent colonial officials from crudely perpetrating naked exploitation and violence on the colonized people. Its political structures and society are directly and indirectly involved in colonial administration.
Not so when an underdeveloped, dependent, compradorial, neo-colonial, and monarchical Third World country like Morocco is the colonizer.
A monarchy which is autocratic, undemocratic and anti-democracy, will definitely be – and it is – vicious and fascistic in WS, whose rich natural resources are largely: fisheries, phosphate mining, renewable energy, iron, phosphorus, manganese and uranium.
The high potential for oil reserves even makes the monarch more highly intolerant, and extremely desperate.
The Report discusses the plundering of WS renewable energy resources which include wind farms, solar installations, and hydrogen production.
The estimated installed capacity (MW) of the wind energy in the occupied WS is 792.2, while its annual production of 1.548,400 (MWh). That of the solar energy is 455MW, with an annual production of 773,500(MWh).
Morocco conservatively generates US$1.31billion annually from wind energy and US$626.9 from solar energy, totalling US$ 1.95 billion.
So rich is the occupied WS in renewable energy that transnational companies (TNCs), foreign governments and private agencies are actively involved in its plundering. In the lead are European companies like French Engie, Voltalia, Vigeo Eiris, Hydrogen de France, and Total Energies; Spanish companies like Acciona, and Cepsa; Italian’s Enel Green Power; German-Spanish Siemens Gamesa; Portuguese Gesto Energy; and MGH Energy, a European company.
There are US Soluna Technologies; and ORNX, a consortium of US, Spanish and German companies. Asian entities are: Chinese Chint Group, and Envision; Indian Shapoorji Pallonji, Sterling and Wilson; Japanese Hitachi Limited; Saudi Arabian ACWA Power; and UAE Taga Company.
Billions of US dollars are invested to plunder WS renewable energy. In 2024, France announced a ten billion Euro investment plan in Morocco’s renewable energy; while the French Development Agency granted a 150 million Euro loan for the infrastructural development of the occupied WS to facilitate the plundering of renewable energy and other resources.
Saudi Arabia invested US$ 2.8 billion from 2016 to 2025; while UAE invested US$ 25 billion. Kuwaiti in 2010 granted Morocco a loan of US$ 69 million for electricity transmission infrastructure. In 2024, the Moroccan government said it would invest US$ 2.1 in the sector.
Further, the Climate Investment Funds is funding Morocco with US$ 629.6 million, and the expected co-financing is approximated at US$ 10.97 billion. When these are added to the finances of TNCs and other private businesses, the investment in WS renewable energy is enormous.
Yet, WS energy resources and the huge investment in the sector are “designed primarily to serve foreign energy markets rather than addressing the needs of the Saharawi people, reinforcing a pattern of resource extraction that mirrors previous forms of colonial exploitation.”
But Morocco immensely benefits from these projects. The energy generated is integrated into Moroccan national grid, powers Moroccan industries and infrastructures, lights homes and streets, and is even exported. Revenues are also generated.
They also contribute to the demographic shifts in occupied WS in favour of Morocco, whose workers and settlers increasingly migrate to populate the area. Lands are grabbed. Saharawi people are displaced from their ancestral land. The occupied territory is militarised. All these, amongst others, violate “the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits occupying powers from altering the demographics of occupied territories.”
Morocco’s engagement of TNCs and other foreign entities in plundering of WS resources help to finance, legitimise, and reinforce its continued occupation of WS. In return, Morocco ensures that these foreign forces cheaply, maximally and superbly exploit WS resources. This explains why Western powers support Morocco morally, politically, diplomatically, militarily, materially and financially in its continued occupation of WS. They, unashamedly undermine: “efforts towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
By extension, the ‘investors’ are “complicit in the illegal exploitation of Saharawi resources. These investments signal to Morocco that it can continue its illegal occupation without consequences, thereby undermining international efforts to achieve a just and lawful resolution of the conflict.”
Besides, their participation raises “substantial legal and ethical concerns due to the territory’s status as a Non-Self-Governing Territory awaiting decolonization.”
The energy projects, therefore, are: Morocco’s direct plundering of WS resources; tools “used to facilitate the settlement and occupation of the territory”; and deepen the illegal occupation. They further “reinforce Moroccan economic control”; “marginalizes the Sahrawi people”, erode “their political and economic influence”; and deny them “their fundamental rights to self-determination and independence.”
Under Moroccan occupation, these energy resources are of no value to the Saharawi people. They do not: “provide energy access, employment opportunities, or economic benefits, they remain deprived of their inalienable right to self-determination, excluded from decision-making and denied their right to manage their own resources.”
Saharawi people as a result of these projects are subjected to “climate injustice”, as they are calamitously disrupting WS: “ecological fragility and threaten the long-term sustainability of human and natural system”.
Hydrogen production, for instance, is “exacerbating an already fragile ecological balance and intensifying water scarcity issues for local communities.”
The Sahrawi who: “relies on access to natural water for pastoral ism, small-scale agriculture, and water collection, is disproportionately affected by these changed environmental changes.”
Furthermore, Morocco’s imposition of discriminatory, and apartheid policies dehumanises the conditions in which Sahrawi live and work. Their human, civil and democratic rights are systematically violated. Freedom of expression, association, movement and protest are severely restricted. Arbitrary arrest, illegal detention without trial, maltreatment of detainees, torture, disappearances, extra-judicial killings, amongst others, are Morocco’s trade marks in the occupied WS.
These repressive policies signify the determination of Morocco to undermine: “the possibility of fair, transparent, and participatory economic governance in the territory”, and points to the urgent need for justice and the total liberation of WS from Morocco’s occupation.
Conclusively, the major forces benefitting from the plundering of WS renewable energy are TNCs and the other foreign entities and countries, followed by Morocco’s squandermania monarchy, compradorial ruling classes, and the upper hierarchy of the chauvinistic bureaucrats and technocrats.
But tragically for the Sahrawi, energy resources and activities have become a huge human, political, economic and environmental disaster.
Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: [email protected]
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