Rich countries should stop pushing fossil fuels on Africa – don’t we deserve a renewable future too? | Vanessa Nakate

Rather than racing to extract natural gas, those who caused the climate crisis should help Africa harness its wind and sun

• Vanessa Nakate is a Unicef goodwill ambassador and youth climate activist

It's official: we're about to reach peak fossil fuels. New figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show that the shift to renewable energy is now unstoppable - and that demand for oil and gas should begin to decline by the end of this decade. This decline is not fast enough to prevent our climate warming irreversibly, but it is a death knell for fossil fuels.

In response, leaders of rich countries will be showing off wind turbines on their coasts and pointing to shiny electric cars on their streets. But they've spent the past few years persuading African countries to increase their gas expansion instead. There's $245bn of gas infrastructure planned in Africa, and gas-rich countries such as Mozambique have faced an onslaught of foreign companies fishing for contracts to extract their gas.