This article appears in the September 6, 2024 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
A Case Study from Nigeria
London Malthusians Against
Africa’s Energy Independence
[Print version of this article]
Aug. 28—Africa is poised for a breakout this century, finally breaking the bonds imposed by imperial overlords in Europe (and recently, also in the United States). Trying to prolong their control over Africa’s riches, imperialist strategists have deployed every tool from control over lingering colonial structures within Africa’s liberated nations, to control over the global “market economy,” and over the media narrative. At the heart of the imperial apparatus lies the population control mafia, supported by a global array of “philanthropic” foundations, who have funded depopulation efforts over the recent decades since World War II ended in 1945.
In Nigeria, this entire network has now been exposed, thanks to the courageous efforts of one journalist, who not only refused to cooperate with it, but revealed its blatant offer to “bribe” him into supporting its game. In a post on his X page on Aug. 12, David Hundeyin laid bare the entire story, of how a London-based operation called Dialogue Earth had offered him the equivalent of $500 to write an article supporting their anti-technology, anti-population-growth agenda. The specifics of their bribe offer will be discussed below.
Behind the oddly-named Dialogue Earth lies an entire network of “philanthropic” foundations and financial controllers at the heart of imperial power. At the base of the financial and resource-control institutions is the cold reality of population control, the ideology which has led generations of European “nobility” silently to condone King Leopold’s genocide in Africa, the genocide of the National Socialists (Nazis) in Germany in the 1930s, and up to today’s tacit support of the ongoing genocide by Israel’s Netanyahu government against the Palestinian population in Gaza.
A central target of their bile: any energy-dense project which would allow a presumed “subject” population to develop, and thus become more nearly the master of its own fate. The specific project currently in the cross hairs is the transformational crude oil refinery built and operated by Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, which became operational early this year. With the capacity to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day, and an associated petrochemical production capability, Dangote’s refinery has threatened to do two things at once: contribute to breaking the historic control of Anglo-imperialists over Africa’s riches, and help Africa control its own destiny.
An EIR investigation follows, of the attempt to stop the refinery or prevent it from realizing its potential.
Aliku Dangote is often referred to as Africa’s richest man. But although he came from a northern Nigerian family with money, Dangote (pronounced “Dan-go-teh”) made his own fortune—not through speculation on financial markets, but in the productive economy. Educated at Egypt’s historic Al-Azhar University, Dangote (according to a biography in Forbes) departed the world of financial speculation in 1996, after a visit to Brazil, and began shifting his emphasis to manufacturing. Dangote Fertilizers began production in 2021, and his cement facilities are today the largest in all of Africa. His cement works have now expanded to 10 nations. as far away as Zambia.
In 2015, Dangote began working with newly-elected nationalist Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on plans for a huge, privately-owned and -financed crude oil refinery. Like most African nations—even the ones blessed with significant reserves of crude oil—Nigeria has been forced to import most of its refined oil products. The refining capabilities are located outside Africa, insulated by a thick layer of “market forces” (middlemen) which both feed on production, and protect one another. Both Buhari and Dangote were thus aware of the need to keep their project away from the “market economy,” where it could easily be thwarted by any of a dozen means. Their efforts were rewarded in January 2024, as the refinery finally began operation.
‘Seventh Wonder of Africa’
The Dangote Refinery—a subsidiary of Dangote Industries Limited—is truly the “seventh wonder” of Africa. Its 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) of refined petroleum products—everything from cooking gas to auto fuels—can provide Nigeria’s entire domestic needs and export to the region as well. Its current output is 300,000 bpd, but is on its way up to full capacity. Staffed 93% by young Nigerians, the refinery also provides on-the-job training in the operation of a large, technology-intensive business. As such, Dangote’s $20 billion venture became not only a financial market-moving enterprise, but one which could ruin the London-created “narrative” enforcing a “low-technology,” resource-dependent future on all of Africa. Dangote’s accomplishment could not be ignored.
In building the refinery, Dangote sought to resolve the contradiction that Nigeria had several major and dozens of minor refineries, yet had to import refined petroleum products. The domestic head of the energy/resource control apparatus is the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, Ltd. (NNPC), around which has developed a network of money- and power-hungry exporters and importers, each getting its cut through the petrodollar market, centered in Antwerp, London and Houston. Dangote’s refinery upset the cozy club of international and local marketeers, who could therefore be counted on by the European imperialists to cooperate in efforts to squeeze the huge new refinery.
The refinery required nearly eight years of construction—including its own docks for unloading crude-oil supertankers and the longest network of underground piping in the world. It has a “complexity rating” (a measure of how many functions, and therefore different grades of fuel, it can produce) which is higher than almost anything in either Europe or America. To build it, Dangote had to buy/import 340 of his own cranes, which can now be used elsewhere in the country. The Crude Distillation Unit, the heart of any refinery, stands over 40-stories high, taller than a Saturn V rocket, instantly becoming the largest man-made structure in Nigeria. For a further list of its numerous “firsts,” there is a 22-minute video on YouTube.
Attacks from All Sides
Dangote’s $20 billion creation was set to fire up in 2023. Then, after a commissioning ceremony led by President Buhari that May—nothing. Only in September did an article appear, saying the opening had been reset for October, another date which was silently missed. Finally, a December 2023 opening was announced, but it’s not clear anything really happened until January 2024. Reportedly, a lack of crude oil for the refinery caused the delays. The same delays (with similar cause) are now holding up production of “premium motor spirit” (PMS), or gasoline.
With the refinery finally operating early this year, Dangote was delivered a “mafia-style” message, as his corporate headquarters were hit by a raid of government stormtroopers. A crack team of “anti-corruption” agents from Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission—after holding employees at gunpoint for several hours—oddly ended up taking no files or documents from the office. Dangote’s company, supposedly one of over 50 companies connected to the “corruption” trial of Central Bank of Nigeria chair (and Buhari ally) Godwin Emefiele, was somehow the only company raided by this “SWAT” team.
With that message delivered, London’s next move was to starve the huge refinery’s voracious appetite for 15 supertankers of crude per year. Despite the fact that southeastern Nigeria is (almost literally) floating on oil, Dangote still had to buy his crude on the international markets. These markets operated on an old-boy “willing buyer, willing seller” code of the commodity trade, and suddenly no one was willing to sell. Dangote has been forced to go as far as Brazil and even Texas in order to secure a steady supply of crude oil. He has made public charges that the “international oil companies” (IOCs), which he likened to “a mafia, worse than a drug cartel,” have further conspired to charge him a premium of $1 per barrel, eating away at his profit margin.
Despite all this, Dangote’s refinery delivered as promised. In April, diesel fuel from the refinery “crashed” the market and immediately undercut the NNPC (government) price by 20%, with Dangote forecasting even greater savings as production increased. While consumers cheered, domestic exporters and importers fumed, their pique outdone only by that in the corporate boardrooms of the “market-makers” in London and Houston. Not only was aviation fuel (kerosene) soon to follow (with comparable price cuts), but Dangote was forecasting PMS for June.
On July 2, the story of the refinery was leading news for Reuters, exposing to the world the panic underlying it. The financial overlords’ news outlet said bluntly:
Nigeria’s new Dangote oil refinery is increasing gasoil exports to West Africa, taking market share from European refiners.” Exports of gasoil from the refinery hit nearly 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) in May, nearly doubling April’s levels. [Emphasis added.]
That shock delivered, Reuters revealed the bigger story, which was that output from the refinery, although increasing during April and May, had [been] significantly cut in June, with the biggest cut being in “gasoil” (cheaper diesel, also called red diesel). Just days before, on June 28, the refinery had reported a “small fire” near the fuel storage tanks, an existential threat to the refinery.
While the international forces celebrated their success, the domestic palace guards around the NNPC were closing ranks against the refinery. Petroleum exporters and refined petroleum product importers in Nigeria have united in a strange way against what they see as a threat against their continued survival. On July 22, after the government subsidizing of PMS was exposed, Nigerian President Bolo Tinubu was forced to convene a meeting of major oil players in Nigeria, including the NNPC, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC, exporters) and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA, importers). But after repeated calls from Tinubu for oil/petroleum dealers to “play along” by supplying crude oil to the refinery, Dangote is still insisting that he has received nothing.
On August 14, The Economist Intelligence Unit issued a warning, that—
further delays in crude oil feedstock to Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals could jeopardize Nigeria’s economic recovery and put additional pressure on the local currency, Naira.
It was London’s way of saying, “the job is almost done.”
What Hundeyin Revealed
David Hundeyin is an investigative journalist in his 30s, who has been writing about the more visibly corrupt aspects of the Nigerian political and corporate world for at least four years. He has gained a reputation for doing his own work and having the courage to “speak truth to power.” He has been praised by prominent Nigerian novelist and commentator Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as “a brilliant Nigerian investigative journalist.” In January 2024, he published a 900-page semi-autobiography, Breaking Point: A Journalist’s Quest for Salvation in Nigeria (in UK, June 2024, 600 pages). One of the chapters is “Bola Tinubu: From Drug Lord to Presidential Candidate,” detailing how Tinubu, now Nigeria’s President, while a student in the United States in the 1980s, got caught up in an FBI investigation into heroin distribution networks.
On August 9, Hundeyin posted an extended statement on X, which began,
Last week, I received an N800,000 [$500] offer from an international NGO called Dialogue Earth (formerly known as China Dialogue Trust) to write an article essentially saying that Dangote Refinery is terrible for the environment because something something “Environmental Concerns,” something something “Climate Change,” something something “Energy Transition Policy,” something something “COP 28.”
He also gave a 10-minute interview exposing the bribe attempt to Arise News in Nigeria.
Included in Hundeyin’s X-post were copies of Dialogue Earth’s suggested, “detailed outline for the proposed article,” and proof of the Ford Foundation (which he calls a “CIA front”) funding for this London-based thinktank-type organization. He pointed out the apparent irony that this pretended “environmental” group was somehow not concerned by the environmental damage caused by the extraction of oil or the intentional adulteration of refined fuels returned to Africa from European refineries—but for Nigeria to refine and then market its own fuel by and for itself, that “is where Dialogue Earth and its funders draw the line.”
As for his motivation for going public, Hundeyin—who makes it clear that he is “not a fan” of Dangote—says his intent is to undermine the people who make light of those (like himself) who have charged that imperialism still exists, that there really are groups—like the Ford Foundation and Dialogue Earth—who are intent on “keeping Africa exactly as poor as it is; and that they [imperialist forces] regularly push levers most of us do not even know exist, to make sure that this status quo is protected.” These people, he says, “believe that Africans should not exist ...”
EIR has taken as its mission over the years to expose just such people and organizations “above suspicion,” and their self-appointed “responsibility” to protect what they believe to be theirs, even if it means condemning broad swaths of the planet to death by “natural” causes such as starvation and disease.
Who’s Behind Dialogue Earth?
The attempt to corrupt the morals of an independent Nigerian journalist with a $500 backhander was not surprising, given whom the London-based NGO Dialogue Earth are fronting for. Founded in 2006 as China Dialogue Trust, it changed its name this year to broaden its mandate from China to the rest of the globe. According to its website, its mission is:
publishing compelling environmental journalism from China, the global ocean, South and Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. Work that lifts up local voices and creates better, more constructive conversations.
Besides paying cash to working journalists, Dialogue Earth “facilitates informed conversations on climate change and the environment, and holds workshops, webinars, and other events ...”
While taking pride in the claim that they are a “non-profit, independent of any government or corporation or … lobby,” they are in fact part of the “climate lobby” which is paid for by the foundations of some of the wealthiest people on the planet, not to mention government agencies including the UK Department for International Development, which gave them £541,048 in 2021 according to their filings at Companies House, in Cardiff, England. These financial sources indeed are responsible for creating what can only be called the “Climate Lobby,” through propagating the myth of the anthropogenic cause of global warming.
A peek at several of its board members and financiers will bring us to the creators of the climate hoax, the subsequent laws regulating it, and those who profit by it. At greater depth, the foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Packard and Hewlett foundations, and others, represent a financial oligarchy committed to a Malthusian policy of deindustrialization and depopulation of this planet. Thousands of NGOs across the globe are paid to play their part.
The People
Sam Geall has been the CEO of Dialogue Earth from its inception. He is an associate fellow at Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which has been at the center of British foreign policy since its establishment in 1920 as part of a joint Anglo-American initiative that also saw the founding of the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City that same year. It will forever be associated with such infamous British imperialist policymakers as Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour; Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood; and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, in a speech at Chatham House in 1982, said he was more loyal to the British Foreign Office than his own State Department.
Geall is also senior visiting research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies. Its long list of funders includes almost all the major oil producers: BP, Shell International BV, ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, Eni, TotalEnergies—but also the UK’s Department for Energy Security, Net Zero, and the Ministry of Defence. Its major financiers are Saudi Aramco and Kuwait; Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy and Kuwait’s Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs and Investments are among its officers. Named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in 1995 for his services in this regard, Geall was instrumental in brokering an agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC producers in the wake of the 1998 Asian Financial crisis.
At a much higher level are Joan MacNaughton, chair of the board of Dialogue Earth, and former chair James Cameron, both of whom have played leading roles in British and international energy and climate policies at the highest level. They exemplify the class of policymakers who seamlessly move between advocacy, government and business as if the concept of “conflict of interest” had never existed.
Lady MacNaughton began her long career as a senior civil servant, as deputy chief of staff to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At the Second World Climate conference in Geneva in 1990, “Iron Lady” Thatcher gave a presentation worthy of the chairperson of Green Peace, in which she said,
The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices. For two centuries, since the Age of the Enlightenment, we assumed that whatever the advance of science, whatever the economic development, whatever the increase in human numbers, the world would go on much the same. That was progress. And that was what we wanted. Now we know that this is no longer true.... The real dangers arise because climate change is combined with other problems of our age: for instance the population explosion.
Thatcher concluded by calling for “sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”
Lady MacNaughton remained in government under Prime Minister Tony Blair, where between 2002 and 2007 she served as Director General of Energy in the then Department of Trade and Industry, thus playing a key role in UK and international energy policy, including in the development of the Clean Energy Action Plan agreed at the G8 Gleneagles Summit. She was Chair of the Governing Board of the International Energy Agency. For these services she was made Companion of the Order of the Bath by Queen Elizabeth in 2006.
From government, MacNaughton moved into academia and the private sector, and from 2007 to 2013 was a Senior Research Fellow at the above-mentioned Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. She has been a trustee of the London-based Climate Group launched in 2004 by Blair and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others. She is an honorary fellow of the International Emissions Trading Association. MacNaughton sat on numerous other boards of institutes and foundations, all involved in climate change policy.
Dialogue Earth’s former chairman, James Cameron, a barrister specializing in climate law, is another significant figure in international climate policy. An Anglo-Australian, Cameron began his career in international climate policy at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). He has played a leading role devising policies, schemes and businesses to decarbonize the global economy. It is this campaign for decarbonizing the economy that is leading to the deindustrialization of Western Europe, and will do the same for Africa if it is not stopped.
In 2003 Cameron created Climate Change Capital (CCC), an investment bank targeting the sustainable energy market, wind farms, solar parks and the like. His other business endeavors, many of them profiting from “decarbonization” tax breaks and subsidies, include the investment trust Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust (ORIT Plc), of which he is executive director, and Ignite Power, a solar power company operating in Africa, of which he is director. In 2000, he co-founded and chaired the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), whose mission has been to have companies disclose their environmental impact on the path towards net zero. Primarily a British operation, it has offices and significant activities in Germany, the United States, Japan, and other countries.
Cameron is currently on the board of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London, funded by the Grantham Foundation, a funder of Dialogue Earth.
The Population Control Mafia
The cause of population reduction has been deeply embraced by the founders of some of the most generous funders of the Dialogue Earth NGO, as is detailed below. They represent the “fondi” or endowments of some of the richest and most Anglophile families in the United States and Europe.
Among their most generous benefactors is the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, whose creation in 1940 was dedicated to promoting policies to reduce population growth, most particularly in Africa, Asia and Ibero-America. It is not surprising then, that the Rockefeller family was the chief sponsor of Henry Kissinger who, as U.S. National Security Adviser in 1974, oversaw the drafting of the notorious National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 which was the first NSC memorandum to link “overpopulation” to U.S. national security interests. With the title, “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests,” it was a highly classified document when it was completed on Dec. 10, 1974. In 1975, Kissinger’s successor as National Security Advisor, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, issued National Security Decision Memorandum 314, which adopted NSSM 200 as official (but covert) U.S. policy on population matters.
Then there is the Hewlett-Packard duo, William Hewlett and David Packard, founders of the Hewlett-Packard empire. Each formed his own foundation, and both were fanatically committed to dramatically reducing population growth and even launched the Zero Population Growth movement over a half century ago. A partial list of these foundations is given below, whose details support our assertions.
The case of the attempt to destroy the Dangote refinery is illustrative of how these forces work in concert. Here is a mega-project that promises to make Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, fully self-sufficient in petroleum products, not only fuels but fertilizer and a whole range of petrochemicals which would otherwise cost it tens of billions of dollars in hard currency annually. Being Africa’s richest man, one would imagine these billionaires would treat him as one of their own, but no, they needed to make an example of him to prevent Africa from becoming a global powerhouse.
The Foundations
Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave Dialogue Earth £476,562 for the years 2021-22. This foundation of the Rockefeller dynasty, the inventors of “Big Oil,” was created in 1940 as the philanthropy of the third-generation brothers of the Rockefeller family. It is one of several funds that make up one of the oldest American “fondi,” and was a pioneer in Malthusian policies going back to the days their father financed the eugenics movement. In 1952, the foundation sponsored the Conference on Population Problems in Williamsburg, Virginia, shortly after John D. Rockefeller III founded the Population Council, with a then huge $1 million grant in its first year, with himself as its first chairman. The Fund has devoted tens of millions to population programs ever since. The fourth generation of Rockefellers—such as David Jr., his sister Eileen, and John D., IV—have followed in their footsteps and have divested the foundation of its holdings in fossil fuels, while contributing to Dialogue Earth.
David and Lucile Packard Foundation gave Dialogue Earth £685,601 for the years 2021-22. Created in 1964 by the Hewlett-Packard co-founder, the late David Packard, it has an endowment of $10 billion. Packard personally stated that the foundation would be principally dedicated to population control, especially in the Third World. In an unpublished letter, Packard reportedly wrote that an annual population increase of 2% would mean “utter chaos for humanity…. The highest priority of our foundation must be to do what can be done to get the worldwide population growth” below 2%. This is quoted by George Anders in Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard. For Packard, environmental causes went hand in hand with population control, and even now the fund’s primary focus is population control and environmentalism. After Packard’s death in 1996, his daughter, Susan Packard Orr, became chairperson, and told the Stanford Business magazine in 1997:
If you’re really concerned about the future of the human race, what it comes down to is that there are too many people.
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation gave Dialogue Earth a total of £614,682 for the years 2021-22. This is the foundation of the co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard corporate empire. It is a huge funder of environmental causes. With assets of $14.9 billion in 2021, it generated $526 million in grants. Like his partner David Packard, William Hewlett was a Malthusian with an obsession for population control. The foundation’s first grant in 1967 was to a population control program; it maintains a $100 million population program. One of the organizations Hewlett has financed is the Population Connection, which was founded in 1968, and until 2002 was known as Zero Population Growth. It was founded by the notorious Paul Ehrlich, the pioneering ideologue for Zero Population Growth through his book, The Population Bomb. William Hewlett was a devoted member and top financier of the Sierra Club, which commissioned and published Ehrlich’s book to propagate the idea that population growth is the principal cause for the degradation of the environment.
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation gave Dialogue Earth £682,851 for the years 2021 and 2022. This is an endowment foundation based on the fortune of Gordon Moore, one of the creators of Silicon Valley as co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and then Intel Corporation in 1968. The Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation (also known as the Moore Foundation) has devoted 46.2% of its grants to environmental conservation.
Children’s Investment Fund gave Dialogue Earth £221,244 in 2022. It was founded by British hedge fund manager Chris Hohn of the Children’s Investment Master Fund, a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG) since 2014.
ClimateWorks Foundation is one of the largest pass-through foundations in the world, distributing millions of dollars in grants annually. It was initiated by a group of large endowment foundations, including the Hewlett Foundation, the Packard Foundation, and the Bloomberg Philanthropies, all of which have representation on the foundation’s board of trustees. It was specifically formed by these foundations to carry out their funding of climate change NGOs and other climate change foundations. While it gave Dialogue Africa a modest £2,202 in 2021, it gave the African Climate Foundation £5,750,000.
European Climate Foundation gave Dialogue Earth £1,164,101 between 2021 and 2022. Based in The Hague, this foundation was part of the same project that created the ClimateWorks Foundation in 2008. This included the mega-endowment foundations, including Hewlett, Packard, Rockefeller Brothers, and Children’s Investment Fund, to create an army of climate change NGOs in Europe and other parts of the world. These foundations have given grants to the European Climate Foundation in the tens of millions of dollars.
Other Foundations and Africa’s Climate Change NGOs
Bloomberg Philanthropies. The foundation of Sir Michael Bloomberg, with revenues of $1.6 billion and assets of $11.1 billion in 2020. On its board of directors is former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, now the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action & Finance; and former Goldman Sachs CEO and Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” M. Paulson, Jr. of The Paulson Institute.
Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. Based in Boston, it is the foundation of billionaire asset manager Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and Chairman of investment management firm GMO, LLC. It is exclusively dedicated to climate change and the environment. A British citizen, Grantham was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2016, and received the Carnegie Medal for Philanthropy in 2017, all for leadership in climate change activities.
A passionate supporter of population control, Grantham compares himself directly to Thomas Malthus, telling the Financial Times in an interview,
X marks the spot where Malthus wrote his defining work. Y marks my entry into the world. What a surge in population has occurred since then! Such compound growth cannot continue with finite resources.
The African Climate Foundation. Founded in 2020, it is the first grant-giving foundation for climate change in Africa. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, it works closely with the ClimateWorks Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. Its funders include the above-mentioned Rockefeller Foundation, ClimateWorks, Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation, Sequoia Climate Foundation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as USAID, Growland Climate Foundation, and Oak Foundation, to mention the larger ones.
The current chair of the African Climate Foundation’s board is Prof. Carlos Lopes, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, London.
