US-Iran War Highlights Palm Oil As Solution for Food, Fuel and Forex
- The US-Iran War has highlighted how crucial it is for developing countries to have some control over food and fuel supplies.
- This is especially important for African countries where internal strife could be ignited by rising costs for food and fuel
- Externally, Africa’s debt risks has resurfaced as oil shocks strains fragile economies in African countries BusinesstodayNG
Delicious and Nutritious: The Unrealized Potential of Red Palm Oil. Global Health Now
The problem for Africa is that the narratives for development is being driven by non-Africans from those who lend money for development to those who demand a stop to forest loss in African countries.
The two are linked through the narrative that deforestation causes "deforestation risks" which could threaten any investments in Africa.
This is nonsense and Forbes writer Felicia Jackson should know better but she is not the only one guilty of pushing the "deforestation risk" narrative.
Olivia Lai wrote a piece for a website that owns the pompous URL Earth. In her piece, Olivia Lai named major conglomerates as guilty of deforestation.
Major multinational brands and agribusinesses, including Procter & Gamble, Mondelēz, Cargill, and Wilmar International, are routinely ranked among the worst companies for palm oil-driven deforestation. These corporations continue to face heavy criticism for sourcing from suppliers linked to illegal rainforest destruction and human rights violations.
African countries looking to develop their agricultural industries should note that Cargill, Procter & Gamble and Wilmar International continue to pay out handsome dividends to their shareholders despite the barrage of evidence of their involvement in driving deforestation.
The dividends paid out for deforestation looks way better than the promises of money from polluting countries to keep African forests standing.
Isn't it about time that the needs of African countries are addressed?
Giving Weight to African Voices
African countries are mostly broke according to UNECA:
This is a problem according to Uchumi360 which covers business, investment, and economic policy across East, Central, and Southern Africa is not debt but structural exposure to external economic shocks.
“The dominant lens through which African economic risk is analysed is debt. Debt-to-GDP ratios, fiscal deficits, and sovereign financing conditions receive the majority of analytical attention from international institutions, ratings agencies, and investor commentary. These concerns are real and in many cases urgent. But the IMF's April 2026 data suggests that debt is a secondary risk that amplifies a primary one.
The primary risk is structural external exposure. An economy with manageable debt levels but high import dependency and limited fiscal buffers is vulnerable to every global commodity cycle.
Every external shock will continue to feel internal until the structure that transmits it is transformed.“
The structural transformation recommended by Uchumi360 is spelled out by AUDA-NEPAD CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas who said in clear and certain terms that:
"Africa is no longer seeking aid, but equitable investment, structural reform and a rebalanced global financial system.
This includes European support for local value addition rather than continued reliance on raw material exports, policy space for industrialisation and safeguards to ensure that climate measures do not become disguised trade barriers. She pointed in particular to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, warning that while designed as a climate tool, it risks penalising the very manufacturing growth Africa needs to climb the global value chain."
Her demand for an equitable trade relationship is similar to that of Wanjira Mathai, the managing director for Africa and global partnerships at the World Resources Institute.
“Africa’s vast resources are vital to the global economy, in sectors spanning agriculture, forestry and fisheries to minerals and metals. But most of these are extracted to be processed and turned into finished products elsewhere, sometimes with dire environmental consequences.”
“Saving Africa” for Africans First
The opinions of Nardos Bekele-Thomas and Wanjira Mathai on what needs to be done to “save Africa” makes a lot more sense than the failed approach of “saving forests to save Africa.”
Their recommendations should trump opinions on the role of forested lands in Africa by a multitude of websites like Nature which all purport to be “saving Africa”.
The recommendations of Bekele-Thomas and Mathai would lay waste to elitist opinions by the pompous URL Earth which asserted that Africans are making too many babies whom they cannot support:
"Furthermore, attempts to deal with deforestation in the continent cannot ignore the problem of population growth. Thus, family planning policies will need to be undertaken as well."
It's shocking that with everything we know now about agriculture and its importance to a sustainable Earth that we still see recommendations of birth control to save Africa.
That raises the stench of “The Dark Legacy of Dr. Reimert T. Ravenholt, Population Czar Malthusianism, that “monstrous doctrine of unreason” where the U.S. had made it its business to stop women in the developing world from having “too many” children. (We, not they, would define how many was “too many.”)
Equally shocking is how prominent groups like the WWF are now peddling forests in the Congo as a snake oil to prevent zoonoses.
Saving Great Apes from Conservation Groups
If the experts from Earth or WWF are right, the world must be doomed as Africa's population growth continues to boom.
The continent is adding over 30 million people annually and is projected to reach nearly 2.5 billion by 2050, driven by high fertility rates and decreasing mortality. Worldometers
This must surely be a foreboding sign for anyone who thinks Africans should not procreate at will because the current population of Africans have already turned a carbon sink for the world, into a carbon source.
Regardless of what the WWF or websites like Nature.com or Earth.com have to say about African forests and what these forests might mean as a climate change buffer to Europe, the bottomline is that the food and fuel needs of Africans has to be prioritized if icons of African biodiversity like gorrillas or chimpanzees are to survive.
Current estimates suggest there are only about 316,000 western gorillas and 5,000 eastern gorillas left worldwide. The primary threats to their survival include political instability, human encroachment, and environmental degradation. World Population Review
All of these threats to the gorillas have the same underlying causes. Poverty and hunger which leads ordinary people to overthrow governments, clear forests and eat wild animals.
Until the underlying causes are addressed in their entirety, actions by foreign groups to save African forests are meaningless as the internet presence of groups like the WWF or Rainforest Rescue actually represent a bigger threat to great apes.
How so?
How does a website on the internet compare to Africans cutting down trees?
The answer is in global greenhouse emissions and climate change which are key threats to the survival of great apes in Africa.
To keep the content of groups like WWF or Earth or Nature online requires massive amounts of energy which creates more greenhouse emissions than deforestation.
As Sarah Griffiths reported for the BBC:
"The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, according to some estimates."
In comparison, Stephanie Searle wrote in International Council on Clean Transportation’s report that Palm oil is the elephant in the greenhouse and blamed palm oil for causing climate change.
"Palm oil production, primarily driven by land-use changes in Indonesia and Malaysia, contributes approximately 1.4% of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This impact is largely driven by deforestation and the destruction of carbon-rich peatlands, making it a significant contributor to climate change."
To put this in the context of industries that are contributing to climate change, palm oil is responsible for 1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions while internet content is responsible for more than double the global greenhouse gas emissions at 3.7%.
The recent advent of artificial intelligence and its quenchless thirst for energy will create an existential threat according to Alex Hanna, the director of research for Distributed AI Research Institute.
"There's a lot of people out there that talk about existential risk around AI, about a rogue thing that somehow gets control of nuclear weapons or whatever," Hanna says. "That's not the real existential risk. We have an existential crisis right now. It's called climate change, and AI is palpably making it worse."
That is terrible news for poor people around the world who are likely to be the first victims of climate change along with great apes.
Oxfam estimates that the poorest 3.5 billion people contributed little to carbon emissions but are most affected by climate impact.
Based on the threats of climate change driven by rich countries, there is an exigent need for African countries to learn from the top palm oil producing countries Indonesia and Malaysia if anyone has an ambition to save great apes in Africa.
Once poor and wrapped in loin cloth in the days of their colonial masters, Indonesia and Malaysia are now masters of their destinies thanks in no small part to their palm oil industries.
That should be a clear indication to African countries that are looking at palm oil for food and energy security that great apes can survive if measures are taken to protect them as part of sustainable development.
Take for example, the world’s rarest and most endangered great ape.
It is not the Tapanuli orangutan as WWF claims in its fundraising campaigns against Indonesian palm oil.
It's the Cross River gorilla with population numbers estimated at under 300, compared to 800 Tapanuli orangutans in Indonesia.
The answer to the survival of great apes in Africa might be a simple three F’s which does not include forests.
Food Fuel Forex
Foreign interlocuters like The Tree Map may find their fortune with help from websites like Mongabay but this is idle chatter.
Saving endangered great apes in Africa should address the most immediate threat to their existence which is hunger and poverty in Africa.
Decades of empty promises of money to prevent deforestation in Africa have caused the Africa Make Big Polluters Pay (MBPP) Coalition to reject the newly launched Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), describing it as a dangerous and misleading attempt to financialise nature under the guise of protecting it.
It may be entertaining to watch how the Hadza kills and eats baboons for raw survival but every view of the YouTube video is a greater threat to great apes than an African family eating baboons to survive.
Articles presenting “palm oil as a deforestation trap” for Africa feed the broken narrative that private certification schemes for palm oil like the RSPO are a magic bullet to saving gorillas and African forests but this is a short sighted view on what African countries need.
The palm oil industry in Africa is not be the be-all and end-all for Africans or their forests and biodiversity.
Deforestation and degradation for timber from Africa driven primarily by illegal logging and growing global demand for premium hardwoods is a major contributor to the loss of African forests which cannot be ignored.
Similarly in palm oil producing powerhouses Indonesia and Malaysia the global demand for timber was one of the initial causes of deforestation.
As this report from the European Parliament acknowledges:
"In places like Indonesia, paper and logging industries frequently clear virgin forest land. Much of the palm oil expansion historically took place on land that had already been heavily degraded by these industries."
The same situation was reported by the World Economic Forum on Malaysian palm oil acreage.
"While palm oil is often globally associated with deforestation, a significant portion of Malaysian palm oil is grown on repurposed agricultural land—such as former rubber or cocoa estates—rather than freshly cleared rainforests."
As Nigeria and Cameroon seek to expand their domestic palm oil industries, their decisions should find extra support from the global fall out of the US war against Iran which has seen top palm oil producing countries falling back on palm oil as a source of energy.
Indonesia in particular has been most impressive in using domestic agriculture as a means to create a trifecta that African nations are striving for. Food and energy independence and foreign exchange savings.
“The President’s directive is clear—biofuel. With B50, we can eliminate 5 million tons of diesel imports. This is a remarkable achievement as it will generate jobs, reduce poverty, and improve public welfare,”
As the world’s top producer of palm oil, there are inspiring stories coming out of Indonesia made possible by its palm oil industry.
Without bombs or control of critical shipping routes like the Hormuz Strait, Indonesia is able to affect global supply chains from power plants in China to affordable cooking oil for Indonesians and beyond.
Indonesia’s success with the palm oil industry is in stark contrast to Nigeria which has 3 million hectares of land suitable for palm oil according to Nigerian expert Enam Obiosio.
"What concerns me more is not the deficit itself, but the persistence of it. This is not a sudden shock. It is a long-standing imbalance that has been allowed to deepen over time. Every year we import what we should be producing, and in doing so, we export jobs, weaken our currency, and suppress the development of a critical agro-industrial value chain."
The implications for Nigeria as it seeks investors and other stakeholders is far reaching if it can replicate the success story of how Colombia grew its palm oil industry as a means to ‘Breaking the Conflict Trap’.
Cameroon, another African country with huge potential to grow palm oil for domestic consumption has similar ambitions as the country backs a multi-million dollar plan to expand palm oil production and cut import dependence.
But getting African countries to where Indonesia and Malaysia are today in terms of palm oil production will require serious commitments on the part of governments in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana to undo decades of neglect of their palm oil industries.
If there was a magic bullet to save African forests and biodiversity, a modern palm oil industry in African countries would be a good choice. A robust palm oil industry in African countries will provide food, fuel and financial security better than any carbon schemes to "save Africa."
Countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo with its massive forest bank and tiny palm oil industry could even get a cherry on top of its palm oil industry from global forest finance as Wilmar International has shown with its Indonesian palm oil operations.
Published May 2026 CSPO Watch
The two are linked through the narrative that deforestation causes "deforestation risks" which could threaten any investments in Africa.
This is nonsense and Forbes writer Felicia Jackson should know better but she is not the only one guilty of pushing the "deforestation risk" narrative.
Olivia Lai wrote a piece for a website that owns the pompous URL Earth. In her piece, Olivia Lai named major conglomerates as guilty of deforestation.
Major multinational brands and agribusinesses, including Procter & Gamble, Mondelēz, Cargill, and Wilmar International, are routinely ranked among the worst companies for palm oil-driven deforestation. These corporations continue to face heavy criticism for sourcing from suppliers linked to illegal rainforest destruction and human rights violations.
African countries looking to develop their agricultural industries should note that Cargill, Procter & Gamble and Wilmar International continue to pay out handsome dividends to their shareholders despite the barrage of evidence of their involvement in driving deforestation.
The dividends paid out for deforestation looks way better than the promises of money from polluting countries to keep African forests standing.
Isn't it about time that the needs of African countries are addressed?
Giving Weight to African Voices
African countries are mostly broke according to UNECA:
- 21 low-income countries in Africa are in or at risk of debt distress (66% of countries in or at risk of debt distress)
- African countries owe US$707.9 billion to external creditors as of 2024
- African countries will pay US$84.4 billion in external debt service in 2024
- External debt owed by African countries is equivalent to 26.6% of their combined GDP in 2024
This is a problem according to Uchumi360 which covers business, investment, and economic policy across East, Central, and Southern Africa is not debt but structural exposure to external economic shocks.
“The dominant lens through which African economic risk is analysed is debt. Debt-to-GDP ratios, fiscal deficits, and sovereign financing conditions receive the majority of analytical attention from international institutions, ratings agencies, and investor commentary. These concerns are real and in many cases urgent. But the IMF's April 2026 data suggests that debt is a secondary risk that amplifies a primary one.
The primary risk is structural external exposure. An economy with manageable debt levels but high import dependency and limited fiscal buffers is vulnerable to every global commodity cycle.
Every external shock will continue to feel internal until the structure that transmits it is transformed.“
The structural transformation recommended by Uchumi360 is spelled out by AUDA-NEPAD CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas who said in clear and certain terms that:
"Africa is no longer seeking aid, but equitable investment, structural reform and a rebalanced global financial system.
This includes European support for local value addition rather than continued reliance on raw material exports, policy space for industrialisation and safeguards to ensure that climate measures do not become disguised trade barriers. She pointed in particular to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, warning that while designed as a climate tool, it risks penalising the very manufacturing growth Africa needs to climb the global value chain."
Her demand for an equitable trade relationship is similar to that of Wanjira Mathai, the managing director for Africa and global partnerships at the World Resources Institute.
“Africa’s vast resources are vital to the global economy, in sectors spanning agriculture, forestry and fisheries to minerals and metals. But most of these are extracted to be processed and turned into finished products elsewhere, sometimes with dire environmental consequences.”
“Saving Africa” for Africans First
The opinions of Nardos Bekele-Thomas and Wanjira Mathai on what needs to be done to “save Africa” makes a lot more sense than the failed approach of “saving forests to save Africa.”
Their recommendations should trump opinions on the role of forested lands in Africa by a multitude of websites like Nature which all purport to be “saving Africa”.
The recommendations of Bekele-Thomas and Mathai would lay waste to elitist opinions by the pompous URL Earth which asserted that Africans are making too many babies whom they cannot support:
"Furthermore, attempts to deal with deforestation in the continent cannot ignore the problem of population growth. Thus, family planning policies will need to be undertaken as well."
It's shocking that with everything we know now about agriculture and its importance to a sustainable Earth that we still see recommendations of birth control to save Africa.
That raises the stench of “The Dark Legacy of Dr. Reimert T. Ravenholt, Population Czar Malthusianism, that “monstrous doctrine of unreason” where the U.S. had made it its business to stop women in the developing world from having “too many” children. (We, not they, would define how many was “too many.”)
Equally shocking is how prominent groups like the WWF are now peddling forests in the Congo as a snake oil to prevent zoonoses.
Saving Great Apes from Conservation Groups
If the experts from Earth or WWF are right, the world must be doomed as Africa's population growth continues to boom.
The continent is adding over 30 million people annually and is projected to reach nearly 2.5 billion by 2050, driven by high fertility rates and decreasing mortality. Worldometers
This must surely be a foreboding sign for anyone who thinks Africans should not procreate at will because the current population of Africans have already turned a carbon sink for the world, into a carbon source.
Regardless of what the WWF or websites like Nature.com or Earth.com have to say about African forests and what these forests might mean as a climate change buffer to Europe, the bottomline is that the food and fuel needs of Africans has to be prioritized if icons of African biodiversity like gorrillas or chimpanzees are to survive.
Current estimates suggest there are only about 316,000 western gorillas and 5,000 eastern gorillas left worldwide. The primary threats to their survival include political instability, human encroachment, and environmental degradation. World Population Review
All of these threats to the gorillas have the same underlying causes. Poverty and hunger which leads ordinary people to overthrow governments, clear forests and eat wild animals.
Until the underlying causes are addressed in their entirety, actions by foreign groups to save African forests are meaningless as the internet presence of groups like the WWF or Rainforest Rescue actually represent a bigger threat to great apes.
How so?
How does a website on the internet compare to Africans cutting down trees?
The answer is in global greenhouse emissions and climate change which are key threats to the survival of great apes in Africa.
To keep the content of groups like WWF or Earth or Nature online requires massive amounts of energy which creates more greenhouse emissions than deforestation.
As Sarah Griffiths reported for the BBC:
"The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, according to some estimates."
In comparison, Stephanie Searle wrote in International Council on Clean Transportation’s report that Palm oil is the elephant in the greenhouse and blamed palm oil for causing climate change.
"Palm oil production, primarily driven by land-use changes in Indonesia and Malaysia, contributes approximately 1.4% of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This impact is largely driven by deforestation and the destruction of carbon-rich peatlands, making it a significant contributor to climate change."
To put this in the context of industries that are contributing to climate change, palm oil is responsible for 1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions while internet content is responsible for more than double the global greenhouse gas emissions at 3.7%.
The recent advent of artificial intelligence and its quenchless thirst for energy will create an existential threat according to Alex Hanna, the director of research for Distributed AI Research Institute.
"There's a lot of people out there that talk about existential risk around AI, about a rogue thing that somehow gets control of nuclear weapons or whatever," Hanna says. "That's not the real existential risk. We have an existential crisis right now. It's called climate change, and AI is palpably making it worse."
That is terrible news for poor people around the world who are likely to be the first victims of climate change along with great apes.
Oxfam estimates that the poorest 3.5 billion people contributed little to carbon emissions but are most affected by climate impact.
Based on the threats of climate change driven by rich countries, there is an exigent need for African countries to learn from the top palm oil producing countries Indonesia and Malaysia if anyone has an ambition to save great apes in Africa.
Once poor and wrapped in loin cloth in the days of their colonial masters, Indonesia and Malaysia are now masters of their destinies thanks in no small part to their palm oil industries.
That should be a clear indication to African countries that are looking at palm oil for food and energy security that great apes can survive if measures are taken to protect them as part of sustainable development.
Take for example, the world’s rarest and most endangered great ape.
It is not the Tapanuli orangutan as WWF claims in its fundraising campaigns against Indonesian palm oil.
It's the Cross River gorilla with population numbers estimated at under 300, compared to 800 Tapanuli orangutans in Indonesia.
The answer to the survival of great apes in Africa might be a simple three F’s which does not include forests.
Food Fuel Forex
Foreign interlocuters like The Tree Map may find their fortune with help from websites like Mongabay but this is idle chatter.
Saving endangered great apes in Africa should address the most immediate threat to their existence which is hunger and poverty in Africa.
Decades of empty promises of money to prevent deforestation in Africa have caused the Africa Make Big Polluters Pay (MBPP) Coalition to reject the newly launched Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), describing it as a dangerous and misleading attempt to financialise nature under the guise of protecting it.
It may be entertaining to watch how the Hadza kills and eats baboons for raw survival but every view of the YouTube video is a greater threat to great apes than an African family eating baboons to survive.
Articles presenting “palm oil as a deforestation trap” for Africa feed the broken narrative that private certification schemes for palm oil like the RSPO are a magic bullet to saving gorillas and African forests but this is a short sighted view on what African countries need.
The palm oil industry in Africa is not be the be-all and end-all for Africans or their forests and biodiversity.
Deforestation and degradation for timber from Africa driven primarily by illegal logging and growing global demand for premium hardwoods is a major contributor to the loss of African forests which cannot be ignored.
Similarly in palm oil producing powerhouses Indonesia and Malaysia the global demand for timber was one of the initial causes of deforestation.
As this report from the European Parliament acknowledges:
"In places like Indonesia, paper and logging industries frequently clear virgin forest land. Much of the palm oil expansion historically took place on land that had already been heavily degraded by these industries."
The same situation was reported by the World Economic Forum on Malaysian palm oil acreage.
"While palm oil is often globally associated with deforestation, a significant portion of Malaysian palm oil is grown on repurposed agricultural land—such as former rubber or cocoa estates—rather than freshly cleared rainforests."
As Nigeria and Cameroon seek to expand their domestic palm oil industries, their decisions should find extra support from the global fall out of the US war against Iran which has seen top palm oil producing countries falling back on palm oil as a source of energy.
Indonesia in particular has been most impressive in using domestic agriculture as a means to create a trifecta that African nations are striving for. Food and energy independence and foreign exchange savings.
“The President’s directive is clear—biofuel. With B50, we can eliminate 5 million tons of diesel imports. This is a remarkable achievement as it will generate jobs, reduce poverty, and improve public welfare,”
As the world’s top producer of palm oil, there are inspiring stories coming out of Indonesia made possible by its palm oil industry.
- From the UNDP, the story of a palm oil farmer who tells the reporter “"Did you know," Siti says, touching her lips, "that even this lipstick comes from palm oil!" She says it lightly with pride.
- To Indonesian media reporting that a switch to higher palm oil based biofuels could save Indonesia US$9.18 billion in forex by 2026.
Without bombs or control of critical shipping routes like the Hormuz Strait, Indonesia is able to affect global supply chains from power plants in China to affordable cooking oil for Indonesians and beyond.
Indonesia’s success with the palm oil industry is in stark contrast to Nigeria which has 3 million hectares of land suitable for palm oil according to Nigerian expert Enam Obiosio.
"What concerns me more is not the deficit itself, but the persistence of it. This is not a sudden shock. It is a long-standing imbalance that has been allowed to deepen over time. Every year we import what we should be producing, and in doing so, we export jobs, weaken our currency, and suppress the development of a critical agro-industrial value chain."
The implications for Nigeria as it seeks investors and other stakeholders is far reaching if it can replicate the success story of how Colombia grew its palm oil industry as a means to ‘Breaking the Conflict Trap’.
Cameroon, another African country with huge potential to grow palm oil for domestic consumption has similar ambitions as the country backs a multi-million dollar plan to expand palm oil production and cut import dependence.
But getting African countries to where Indonesia and Malaysia are today in terms of palm oil production will require serious commitments on the part of governments in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana to undo decades of neglect of their palm oil industries.
If there was a magic bullet to save African forests and biodiversity, a modern palm oil industry in African countries would be a good choice. A robust palm oil industry in African countries will provide food, fuel and financial security better than any carbon schemes to "save Africa."
Countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo with its massive forest bank and tiny palm oil industry could even get a cherry on top of its palm oil industry from global forest finance as Wilmar International has shown with its Indonesian palm oil operations.
Published May 2026 CSPO Watch