The StopAcop Union is strongly denounced financial institutions that have chosen to bankroll their destructive East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), as announced by EACOP Ltd. Company on Wednesday. While concerned, the announcement shows the EACOP company’s desperate attempt to encourage investors’ trust. An announcement that does not disclose the amount of loans committed by the five banks cannot hide the fact that after more than seven years of delay, the project has failed to reach a complete financial closure.
Several lenders have previously made public their intentions to fund EACOP. Reported commitments from Afreximbank and the Islamic Development Bank date back to 2022, and since then both institutions faced a fierce backlash from civil society in Uganda and Tanzania. Similarly, standard banks are the subject of indomitable opposition to reported involvement.
Nevertheless, with this new confirmation, Africa’s Export Bank (Aflexibank), South Africa’s Standard Bank, Stanbic Bank Uganda, KCB Bank Uganda, and Islamic Corporation for Private Sector Development (ICD) have marked themselves as realists of the continued bounty of the continued exparatory of climate change, environmental destruction and environmental destruction. At the expense of the local community.
When the world is experiencing the constant impact of climate change, this decision to fund a large-scale fossil fuel infrastructure project is not merely irresponsible. It is an aggressive attack on our planet and our people. EACOP is committed to only deepening extreme weather events that exacerbate climate collapse, flooding, and extreme weather events, disproportionately affecting African communities that are the least contributing but worst impacts to the climate crisis.
Furthermore, the so-called promises of development by EACOP and its supporters are merely corporate propaganda. The reality is completely different. Tens of thousands of people have already given way to the pipeline, facing loss of livelihoods, inadequate compensation and worsening socioeconomic conditions. The project prioritizes the extraction of Uganda oil (along with the potential exploitation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan) not for the benefit of people, but for the benefit of their partners, not for the benefit of the people, but for the benefit of the people, but the local community carries social and environmental costs.
We repeat the strong opposition expressed by Dr. Uganda, Tanzania and the Congolese Civil Society, and call on all other financiers to refuse to fund this reckless venture. Those who already fund them show which side they stand on in the history they stand: the destruction, exploitation, the greed aspects of corporate greed. They chose to become enemies of Uganda, Tanzania, the East African region, the African continent, and in fact, all human people.
EACOP is a project that has long been avoided by major investors around the world. To date, 43 banks and 29 insurance companies have already ruled out their support for EACOP. Even the major investors in the whole cocky mouth are working hard to drop the EACOP project on the fossil fuel giant. Nordea, for example, is one of the largest Nordic banks and one of the world’s largest private banks investing in total, and recently shared that in addition to the ban on project finance, it has not purchased new stocks or bonds in total for the EACOP project. Additionally, they are evaluating additional measures to affect the total, and the next potential step is to completely eliminate the company from the remaining third of the portfolio.
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In particular, the small entities currently involved in partial funding for the project, especially small entities, are unable to fund the entire project and do not provide the legality of the EACOP. We continue to be deeply concerned about their confirmed role as project finance, but we believe that global financial institutions are still aware of this project as it is truly an environmental and human rights catastrophe.
As the fight against EACOP continues, our communities will be protected and the planet’s sustainability will rise to the affected communities around the world and the ordinary people who are refusing to succumb to those seeking to benefit from our downfall, and other potential lenders who have not yet distanced themselves from this anti-development project.
