Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Africa

SECTION TITLE: AFRICA

The U.S. government's policy in Africa is first and foremost the projection of military force through AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. AFRICOM says it exists, "to fight terrorism," but in reality its purpose is to secure Africa's oil and other natural resources, which include food and mineral inputs demanded by industrial and military sectors in the U.S. and its Western, Anglophone allies. Just 11 months after creating AFRICOM in 2007, Africa superseded the Middle East as a source of U.S. oil imports.

Greens want to end the use of U.S. military force in Africa and all covert U.S. operations, which rob African people of their lives and natural resources.

Fossil fuel and uranium drilling and mining, much of which take place in Africa, are the first steps in the energy production processes hastening catastrophic climate change, which will be harsher on Africa than on any other part of world.

Greens want renewable energy technologies and clean, free fuel, solar, wind, and hydro, to take its place in Africa and elsewhere.

GREEN SOLUTIONS

1. Stop training, arming, advising, and propping up African dictators like Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame.

2. Encourage the development of Green political parties to challenge undemocratic, violent regimes.

3. Support fair trade and local economies in the United States to reduce consumption and environmental pollution, and reduce the demand for Africa’s natural resources.

4. Bring the Pentagon's purchase of Coal to Liquid (CTL) transportation fuel from the South African SASOL corporation to the attention of climate activists worldwide. The Pentagon is the world's largest consumer of CTL fuel, which it burns to power its military aircraft and vehicles in Africa. CTL fuel produces even more greenhouse gases than petroleum-based fuels.

5. Support any African efforts to ban uranium mining, which causes contamination, water waste, and the displacement of indigenous peoples. Legislated bans on uranium mining would curtail the spread of nuclear power heralded by Libya and Namibia's announcements that they are going nuclear. Since Africa is the source of so much of the world's uranium, they would also curtail the spread, and the ongoing operation of nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons maufacture in the rest of the world.