Climate activists gathered outside the Rosebank offices of Standard Bank and Total Energies in Johannesburg, South Africa on Tuesday (19th August 2025), delivering memorandums that call for an end to new fossil-fuel financing and for reparations to communities affected by oil and gas projects in Africa. Organized as part of a continent-wide Week of Action running from 18–24 August, the protest framed banks as “accomplices” to extractive projects and called on financiers to shift capital to people-centered clean energy. Protesters handed memorandums to both companies; formal responses were pending at press time.
At the heart of the activists’ case is a familiar but increasingly targeted charge: that Africa’s largest banks are prolonging fossil fuel dependence by underwriting megaprojects whose social and ecological costs are borne locally while profits are exported. Standard Bank was singled out for its role in several high-profile projects, including a US$485-million slice of debt for Total Energies’ Mozambique LNG development, participation around Eni’s Coral South FLNG, and involvement in the first external financing tranche for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
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Those facts are not in dispute: Standard Bank confirmed the US$485-million commitment in 2020; Coral South’s project financing included the bank; and in March this year EACOP Ltd announced its first US$1 billion syndicated tranche, naming Standard Bank among the lenders. Activists say these deals typify “fossil colonialism”, projects that displace risk onto communities and ecosystems. The bank counters that it finances within environmental and social safeguards and is increasing capital for the transition.
The Johannesburg action unfolded just days after a significant legal decision reshaped South Africa’s offshore prospects. On 14 August, the Western Cape High Court set aside an environmental authorization for exploration in Block 5/6/7 off the country’s southwest coast, work linked to Total Energies and Shell, citing shortcomings in the assessment of spill risks and climate impacts. The ruling allows proponents to resubmit strengthened assessments, but for campaigners it was a concrete win and a signal to financiers that permitting pathways can become liabilities when due diligence is thin.
Across the region, the financing picture is tilting toward African and regional lenders even as Western banks face greater activist and policy scrutiny. In March, EACOP Ltd said it had closed a first external financing allocation with a syndicate including Afreximbank, Standard Bank, Stanbic Bank Uganda, KCB Bank Uganda and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector; civil society coalitions responded that the pipeline remains only partially financed and urged remaining banks and insurers to stay out. That trench warfare over capital is likely to shape timelines for EACOP and similar projects long after the street protests disperse.
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For Standard Bank, the protest lands as the group promotes a bigger sustainability headline: a refreshed target to mobilize more than R450 billion in sustainable finance by 2028, up from earlier goals, and a claimed energy-supply ratio in 2024 that channeled nearly six times more finance to renewables than to non-renewable power generation. The bank’s 2025 climate policy nonetheless retains room for financing selected oil and gas activities under defined conditions, reflecting a “mixed energy” stance that activists reject as inconsistent with the Paris Agreement. That tension, between transition-finance narratives and exposure to midstream and upstream oil and gas, is precisely why campaigners have pivoted to targeting lenders alongside operators.
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Total Energies, meanwhile, remains central to Africa’s oil and gas map despite rising legal and reputational headwinds. In Mozambique, executives and contractors say conditions have been created for the company’s US$20 billion Mozambique LNG project to restart after years under force majeure due to insurgency in Cabo Delgado. Export-credit agencies and lenders have signaled renewed support, with the U.S. Export-Import Bank re-approving a multi-billion-dollar loan, though human-rights and security concerns continue to shadow the project.
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In the south-west Atlantic, Total Energies and partners are pushing appraisal and exploration in Namibia’s Orange Basin around the giant Venus discovery, even as analysts temper early hype amid higher-than-expected gas content and rising development costs. The company has also proposed a multi-well campaign on South Africa’s side of the basin, underscoring its long-term bet on the frontier.
The optics matter because this latest wave of protests coincides with Total Energies’ most visible continental sponsorship of the year: the 2024 African Nations Championship (CHAN), branded as Total Energies CHAN 2024, now underway after CAF postponed the tournament to August 2025 and awarded hosting to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The company’s logo is everywhere from match signage to “Player of the Match” trophies, just as legal and community disputes over exploration and pipelines make headlines.
Supporters of the sponsorship argue that investing in African football builds community and youth opportunities; critics call it classic “sportswashing” meant to soften scrutiny of fossil expansion. Either way, the juxtaposition is stark: street pressure on the corporate and banking pillars of fossil development, and prime-time stadium branding for the same energy major in a marquee African competition.
What the Rosebank protest ultimately surfaces is a broader continental argument over development, energy security and justice. Proponents of projects like EACOP and Mozambique LNG say gas in particular can underwrite industrialization, export earnings and grid stability; opponents counter that lock-in risks, displacement, fragile permitting, and climate-exposed balance sheets make such bets poor development policy, especially when clean-energy alternatives are becoming cheaper and faster to deploy.
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Courts are increasingly a venue for sorting those claims, as seen in South Africa’s offshore ruling. Banks are another, as new disclosure standards and investor pressure complicate continued fossil expansion, even under a “transition” banner. The weeks ahead will test whether financiers take the protest memorandums seriously, or wait for the next tranche to close.
