Her visit followed a predictable format by Western politicians, with lots of money and lots of lectures to ensure that the younger generation grows up believing that humans are a cancer that need to stop having families and start living like cavemen.
In 2022, a few African countries had the pleasure (curse) to be visited by President Biden's head of climate envoy, John Kerry.
The US politician strongly advised Africans not to use fossil fuels, including natural gas, which has half the emissions of coal.
He was concerned about how Africans would get gas, pay for it, and finally how we would ‘capture’ the emissions. Clearly his ignorance knows no bounds.
Putting aside the fact that global temperatures have actually fallen slightly over the past eight years – despite unprecedented global carbon dioxide emissions – Africans use very little of the supposedly climate ‘warming’ gas, oil and coal.
Despite representing a sixth of the world's population, Africa uses less than five per cent of the total global electricity.
Three out of every four Africans, or roughly 900 million people, have no access to clean cooking fuel. We use firewood and cow dung (biomass) to cook our meals or heat our homes.
In Kenya for instance, 70 per cent of our energy demand is met by biomass (firewood and crop waste), while the figure for Sub-Saharan Africa is about 90 per cent.
My family of six uses around 12 kWh of electricity per month costing roughly $3. We basically use electricity to charge our phones, for lighting and for powering the TV. Most families in my village with electricity consume an average of 6 kWh.
Climate alarmists talk of how ‘solar electricity’ will help Africans ditch fossil fuels, without realising that we don't have refrigerators, dishwashers, laundry equipment, microwaves, etc, and therefore electricity is a tiny percentage of our total energy consumption.
According to Our World in Data statistics: 'In just 2.3 days the average American or Australian emits as much as the average Malian or Nigerien in a year'.
By contrast, Kerry's private, family jet has emitted 300 metric tons of carbon since the Biden administration began a little over two years ago. That’s 150 tons per year.
The average Kenyan only emits 22 tons in their lifetime. He lectures poor hungry Africans forgetting that throughout the 1900s, Europe and the US were responsible for more than 90 per cent of the total global emissions.
Today the US, with a population of 330m is responsible for around 12 per cent of the global emissions. Africa is responsible for less than four per cent of the global emissions with 1.4 billion people. John Kerry, politely, take your family jet and your climate alarmism to the US and China.
The US is worried of Chinese and Russian influence on African nations, so sent Vice President Harris to Africa in with a goody bag full of gifts for Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia.
Some of the money will be used to develop 5G internet in Tanzania, some will fund empowerment projects for women in the three countries.
Seven billion dollars, meanwhile, will be wasted on eco schemes, with Harris warning her pliant hosts that there is a ‘climate crisis’ and she and the US are ready to save Africa from it.
Much of this money will be spent with direction or input from the United Nations (UN) and its affiliates.
The UN is, in my opinion, the most anti-African development and one of the most corrupt organisations in the world today.
I was flabbergasted when I received a Twitter notification from United Nations Development Project (UNDP) that read '2021 was one of the warmest on record for the African continent. It was also the year Burkina Faso set, for the first time, a quantifiable greenhouse gas emissions reduction target – committing to cut emissions by almost 30 per cent by 2030'.
Twenty per cent of Burkina Faso’s population has no access to electricity with the average person consuming just 90 kWh.
The average American uses 13,000 kWh of electricity per year with a typical refrigerator consuming 500 kWh per annum.
About 10 per cent of people in Burkina Faso have access to LPG and other cleaner forms of cooking, the rest are still burning dung and biomass.
This is the highest form of modern neocolonialism.
How do we run industries without energy? How do we power our industries when we industrialise? How do we power our hospitals? How about fertilising our farms? Should the few people who climbed out of poverty go back to burning firewood, and stop transporting their produce to markets.
Back in 2008 the UN’s own magazine, the UN Chronicle, ran an article that caught many people's attention, called 'The benefits of hunger'. The article summed up the neocolonialist mindset at the heart of the organisation.
'For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster,’ it read.
‘If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.'
When the UN was confronted about it in 2022, it claimed the article was meant as satire.
Any African who thinks 'sustainable development', a phrase tied strongly to the climate change lobby, is here to save us, sorry to burst your bubble. It isn’t.
The UN is here to ensure we don't burn our oil in our industries. Ensure we don't produce abundant harvests; the climate alarmists don't want us to mechanise or irrigate our farms because that means we beat hunger and poverty, and in turn won't need them.
‘Sustainable’ to the UN and US just means Africans limit their energy use, keeping it at around zero. It wants millions of us to never progress from burning dirty firewood in our thatched, ‘sustainable’ huts. Say no to 'sustainable development' in Africa.
If Harris or Kerry want to preach about climate change, let them take it to their own cities or China's. If the US believes the world is ‘on fire’ perhaps they could stop consuming 20 million barrels of oil per day, or maybe they could bribe China to stop burning 10 million barrels rather than pay us to cut back on the four million barrels we currently consume.
Of course, the likes of John Kerry and Kamala Harris don’t really believe their alarmist 'climate change' narrative.
It’s very telling that the ones lecturing us about ‘rising oceans’ are buying multi-million dollar beach houses.
One notable example of this is Kerry's old boss Barack Obama, who famously told Africa that if it developed to a point where we all have cars, we'd have the earth 'boil over'.
Far from being concerned about boiling seas, Obama’s bought a lovely mansion right next to the water.
Another alarmist who has made so much money from being a climate advisor, Al Gore, has also bought a lovely home right next to the ocean he claims is going to drown us all.
None of the people lecturing Africans are Chinese. China is not buying into ‘net zero’ scams.
Last year, its government was permitting two coal power plants to be built per week. China understands the essence of affordable, plentiful and reliable energy.
African leaders should too.
Jusper Machogu is a farmer and agricultural engineer from Kenya.
