Digging Graves, Not Wells: How EACOP Buries People, Trees, and Truth

 

By Emmanuel Mihiingo Kaija — Emkaijawrites@gmail.com

Introduction : “To poison the land is to silence the ancestors.” — Kiswahili Proverb

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a 1,443-kilometre artery of steel stretched from the Tilenga oil fields of Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania, is not merely a construction project—it is a parable, a lamentation, and a moral trial. Promoted as a corridor of prosperity, this pipeline slices through ancestral graves, wetlands, and farmlands with the clinical precision of a colonial scalpel. It is funded by dreams of development but drenched in contradictions. At its core lies a question as ancient as African civilization: what does it profit a people to gain barrels of oil and lose the soul of the land?

In 2022, the project’s estimated $5 billion investment drew together governments, multinationals, and financiers—TotalEnergies (France), the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), and the Uganda National Oil Company among them. Supporters praise its capacity to transport 216,000 barrels of oil per day, calling it the “longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world.”² Yet beneath this steel sinew lies a grave crisis: over 100,000 people displaced, sacred sites desecrated, water sources endangered, and ecosystems maimed.³ The project passes near Lake Victoria—East Africa’s lifeblood—and threatens the basin that sustains over 40 million people with its glistening arteries of water.

This is not merely an infrastructural debate. It is a spiritual confrontation. It is the moment when bulldozers meet bones, when contracts clash with covenants, and when profit silences prophecy. In African cosmologies—Christian, Islamic, and Indigenous—the land is not a commodity. It is a sanctuary. In Luganda, we say “Omulandira gw’aba jjaajja, si gwa kutunda”—the land of the ancestors is not for sale. To violate land is to violate lineage. To unearth soil without reverence is to desecrate memory, inheritance, and the invisible communion between the living and the dead.

Yet the discourse around EACOP remains trapped in the narrow dialect of GDPs and royalties, as though development were a numerical god. Proponents speak of jobs, electricity, and sovereign wealth funds. But we must ask: which bodies will bear the cost of this development? Whose memories will be erased to make way for this black river? Whose justice is weighed, and whose justice is drowned in crude?

This paper journeys through that sacred tension—between oil and oracles, between the extractive and the ethical. It is an interdisciplinary lamentation and interrogation, drawing from environmental science, theology, African cosmology, human rights law, and community testimony. It listens not only to statistics and treaties, but also to drums, to bones, to the trembling voices of displaced women, to the silent scream of poisoned wetlands, and to the prophetic anger rising in the youth.

In doing so, it dares to ask: Is there such a thing as resource justice in Africa? Can pipelines be laid without ancestral blood being spilled? And what gospel must we proclaim—not of fossil empires—but of ecological resurrection? Let the prophets rise. Let the soil speak. Let the land remember.

2.The Gospel According to Oil: Development or Displacement?

“The goat that eats the master’s yam shall one day lie at the altar of sacrifice.” — Yoruba Proverb. Across the glossy brochures of multinationals and the PowerPoint slides of energy ministers, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline is praised as a gospel of economic resurrection. Officials speak with fervor of GDP growth, increased foreign direct investment, and technological capacity building. The governments of Uganda and Tanzania anticipate revenues in the billions, with the promise of industrial jobs, energy security, and local empowerment.⁵ President Yoweri Museveni has called the pipeline “a strategic artery for national transformation,” insisting it will move Uganda from a peasant economy to a middle-income status.⁶ But behind these triumphal declarations lies another gospel—one whispered by the displaced, written in the blood of uprooted graves, and sung by rivers that now flow with the threat of extinction.

The reality is that the EACOP project is a tale of uneven development—an oil-fed paradox that enriches the few while wounding the many. According to Oxfam’s 2023 report, the project has already displaced more than 100,000 people, with communities reporting delayed or inadequate compensation for their land, lack of relocation plans, and destruction of their sources of livelihood. In regions like Hoima, Kakumiro, and Kyotera in Uganda, residents have been forced to surrender ancestral farmland for figures that do not reflect the market value, often paid years after the land was taken. Many received only partial compensation, while others were coerced into signing agreements they did not fully understand.⁸ What was branded as “development” in policy papers is experienced as land theft in villages.

This extraction narrative mirrors colonial patterns. In the name of “progress,” resources are taken, local communities are displaced, and global capital benefits. The involvement of TotalEnergies—a French multinational oil company—raises haunting questions about neo-colonial control and Africa’s inability to define its own terms of modernity. Why must sovereignty always mean submission to foreign corporations? Why must the African dream be mortgaged through oil barrels that flow to European refineries while our children walk kilometers for clean water? The oil beneath Uganda’s soil has become both blessing and bondage—a liquid idol around which false hopes are offered.

Even the banks and insurers originally hailed as partners in prosperity have begun to retreat. Major financial institutions including Barclays, HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Munich Re have withdrawn from the project citing environmental, human rights, and reputational risks.⁹ The World Bank itself—often accused of enabling extractive projects—refused to fund EACOP. Their silence is a verdict. Their withdrawal is a whisper to the wise: this pipeline may indeed be a ticking moral and environmental bomb.

Moreover, Uganda and Tanzania’s governments have relied on rhetoric that casts oil as divine destiny. But when did oil become our savior? When did we start baptizing black crude as a messianic fluid? True salvation, according to both the gospel of Christ and the wisdom of African cosmology, does not come through what is extracted from the ground, but through what is rooted in justice. In Matthew 6:21, we read: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If our treasure is placed in pipelines rather than people, in barrels rather than breath, in contracts rather than covenant—then our hearts too shall follow down a road of ruin.

Indeed, the contradictions grow deeper when one considers the African Development Bank’s simultaneous endorsement of the African Green Growth Agenda, while also quietly supporting oil and gas projects.¹⁰ This duplicity is the core of Africa’s modern tragedy: caught between the gods of carbon and the cries of creation. As the continent most vulnerable to climate change, Africa cannot afford to embrace fossil futures under the illusion of progress. To do so is to set fire to the granary while chasing a shadow.

The doctrine of development must be exorcised of its extractive demons. It must be baptized anew in the waters of justice, equity, and ancestral wisdom. Development is not simply measured by GDP, but by the flourishing of ecosystems, the dignity of rural mothers, and the preservation of spiritual and ecological heritage. Otherwise, we are no different from the biblical rich fool in Luke 12, who built larger barns to store his wealth, not knowing his soul would be demanded of him that very

 

3.Legal and Human Rights Violations Along the Pipeline: When the Law Sleeps and the Earth Screams

“When the fence eats the crops, who then shall guard the harvest?” — Acholi Proverb. The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) has not only disturbed the soil but also shaken the pillars of law, dignity, and constitutional protection. From Uganda’s Albertine region to Tanzania’s Tanga shores, the pipeline slithers like a modern Leviathan—its scale vast, its promises golden, but its wake marked by dispossession, coercion, and legal manipulation. The promise of development has increasingly become a cloak to mask legal violations, where the rights of the rural poor are bartered for the approval of foreign investors and multilateral backers.

At the heart of the legal crisis lies the weaponization of compensation laws. Uganda’s 1995 Constitution and Land Act provide for fair and prompt compensation in cases of compulsory land acquisition.¹¹ Yet, as Human Rights Watch noted in its 2023 report, thousands of families were left in legal limbo for over two years—denied access to their land, barred from planting food crops, and offered compensation well below market value. In many cases, affected persons were made to sign documents written in English without proper translation, or under pressure from local authorities backed by oil interests. Some were misled into accepting “gratuity” rather than lawful compensation, while others faced threats of arrest if they resisted. The law, instead of being a shield, became a club.

The pattern of legal disenfranchisement is not an accident—it is architecture. In both Uganda and Tanzania, the EACOP Bill passed by Parliament in 2022 introduced sweeping exemptions for the oil consortium, including tax holidays, limited liabilities for environmental harm, and expedited land acquisition processes.¹³ While touted as a framework for investment efficiency, the law effectively insulated TotalEnergies and its partners from accountability. Local communities, on the other hand, were offered legal echoes rather than justice. One Tanzanian elder in the Morogoro region lamented, “The law speaks only in cities. In our villages, it is the pipeline that rules.”

Indeed, security forces have increasingly been deployed to silence dissent. According to the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), over 30 environmental activists and journalists have been arbitrarily detained in Uganda between 2022 and 2024, accused of inciting violence or sabotaging national interests. Their true “crime” was questioning the legitimacy of land seizures and the environmental impact of the project. In February 2024, students protesting forced evictions in Kyotera District were tear-gassed, and their leaders taken into “preventive custody.” This rising culture of intimidation bears the stench of authoritarian drift—where national development is equated with silencing opposition, and criticism is criminalized as treason.

Yet, the law does not belong to corporations. It belongs to the people. And the international legal regime is slowly awakening to the moral and juridical contradictions of EACOP. In a 2023 advisory opinion, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights reminded states that infrastructure projects must comply with Article 21 of the African Charter, which affirms the right of all peoples to freely dispose of their natural resources and to receive compensation for any deprivation.¹⁵ Uganda and Tanzania are state parties to this Charter, yet their silence on these violations amounts to an abdication of their oath.

Moreover, international environmental law has been trampled in the name of fast-tracking oil wealth. EACOP threatens to cut across 400 wetlands, protected forest reserves, and critical wildlife corridors, violating both the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.¹⁶ Uganda’s own National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), which had initially flagged serious concerns, eventually approved the project after “revisions,” sparking allegations of regulatory capture. What is the price of approval when it comes with the death of rivers?

But perhaps the gravest sin is theological—the sin of forgetting. In both Christian and African traditional cosmologies, the land is not a dead asset but a living witness. As Leviticus 25:23 declares, “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.” To displace communities without justice is not just a policy error—it is a spiritual desecration. It violates the sacred kinship between land and lineage, memory and soil. In Acholi cosmology, displacement without ritual is believed to provoke ancestral unrest—wandering spirits who cannot find home. What then shall be the consequence of displacing entire villages without consent, apology, or restitution?

Indeed, the cry for justice is rising. A coalition of African lawyers, environmental defenders, and faith leaders filed a petition at the East African Court of Justice in 2024, challenging the legality of the pipeline’s land acquisition practices and its environmental license. Their case stands not only as legal resistance but also as prophetic witness—a reminder that no project, however grand, can be righteous if built on the bones of the violated.

Thus, the oil that was meant to liberate now imprisons. The pipeline that was meant to flow with prosperity now pulses with blood, bitterness, and buried stories. If law is to mean anything in Africa’s future, it must not be a chorus sung only for the elite, but a dirge that remembers the displaced, a hymn that shelters the weak, and a covenant that holds the powerful accountable. “The ancestors do not bless the hand that uproots without reason.” — Lunda Proverb (DRC/Zambia)

4.The Environmental Toll — Rivers, Forests, and the Cry of Creation

“If the forest dies, the drums will forget their song.” — Bemba Proverb (Zambia). The East African Crude Oil Pipeline is not merely a project of pipes and contracts—it is a gash across the lungs of the continent. Stretching 1,443 kilometers across Uganda and Tanzania, it is the world’s longest heated oil pipeline.¹⁸ But beneath this engineering marvel lies a catastrophe of staggering proportions, unfolding not with explosions, but with silence—the silence of felled trees, poisoned wetlands, and displaced animals. This is not only an ecological emergency; it is a spiritual betrayal of the earth that feeds us, of the rivers that mother our children, and of the ancestral forests where memory still dances.

The pipeline threatens over 400 wetlands, 230 rivers, and at least 2,000 square kilometers of fragile ecosystems. It cuts through the Wambabya and Bugoma Forest Reserves in Uganda—homes to chimpanzees, rare tree species, and sacred shrines. The Bugoma Forest alone, a biodiversity hotspot, shelters over 500 chimpanzees, 225 bird species, and more than 20 mammal types, some of which are endangered.²⁰ Already, satellite imagery from Global Forest Watch indicates a 22% increase in deforestation in areas adjacent to the proposed pipeline route since 2021.²¹ The trees are falling—but unlike timber, they are not being counted in the ledgers of profit.

Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park—one of Africa’s most iconic conservation areas—is particularly imperiled. Though EACOP officials claim the pipeline skirts the park’s boundaries, oil drilling activities, road expansions, and seismic surveys have already disrupted the movement patterns of elephants, giraffes, and lions.²² In 2023, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) reported an increase in animal stress behaviors, including aggressive encounters and abnormal migrations. The park’s rivers, especially the Nile tributaries, are also at risk of oil spills—a reality not hypothetical, but historical. Studies from Niger Delta oil sites show that even minor spills can take over 20 years to recover in tropical ecosystems.²³ What, then, shall be the cost of one rupture near Murchison’s wetlands?

Moreover, the pipeline’s construction and maintenance require heating the crude to 50°C using electric trace heating—an energy-intensive process that emits over 33 million metric tons of CO₂ annually over its lifespan.²⁴ This figure dwarfs the annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania combined, placing the two countries in direct contradiction with their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.²⁵ Africa contributes less than 4% of global emissions, yet it suffers the worst droughts, floods, and food insecurity. EACOP adds insult to injury, turning Africa’s most climate-vulnerable region into a carbon sacrifice zone.

Indeed, the irony is bitter: while Uganda launches its National Climate Change Policy and Tanzania champions afforestation efforts, both governments embrace a pipeline that undermines their own environmental pledges.²⁶ This duplicity is theological in nature. As Genesis 2:15 reminds us, humanity was placed in the Garden “to till and to keep it”—to cultivate, not to conquer. Yet EACOP tills with bulldozers and keeps with insurance policies. It forgets that the earth is not merely a resource, but a relative. In Baganda cosmology, the forest (ekibira) is not just a biome—it is a spirit-being, home to ancestral presence and medicinal wisdom. To defile the forest is to dishonor the clan.

Water, too, is under siege. The pipeline endangers the shores of Lake Victoria, upon which over 40 million people depend for drinking water, fishing, and agriculture.²⁷ Spills, leaks, and heavy sedimentation from construction sites threaten to contaminate its tributaries—especially in areas like Kyotera, Rakai, and Lwengo. The specter of ecological disaster haunts every kilometer. If one leak occurs, the consequences ripple beyond borders, poisoning not only fish and soil but also cross-border peace and regional food security.

Yet, beyond science and scripture, there is the voice of the people. In Bukoba, elders have begun performing water rituals asking the spirits of the lake to “forgive the greed of men.” In Buliisa, farmers offer burnt offerings of millet and cassava at riverbanks where construction trucks have trampled sacred crocodile breeding grounds. These are not superstitions. They are spiritual protocols, cosmological cries for balance, for a return to a relationship with the land that is based not on extraction but on reverence.

This is why resistance has become a sacred duty. Faith communities, local environmental defenders, and global alliances such as Stop EACOP have risen with a prophetic voice.²⁸ In April 2024, over 300 religious leaders from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania signed the Interfaith Declaration for Environmental Justice, condemning the pipeline as a “sin against creation.” Their message was clear: economic growth cannot be achieved by digging the graves of our grandchildren’s future. “He who cuts down the forest, cuts down the future of his children.” — Malian Proverb

The gospel of oil must be re-examined under the light of creation theology and environmental science. Development without sustainability is death with delayed symptoms. Let not the pipeline become our Tower of Babel—a monument to ambition that forgets heaven, and falls under its own weight. Let the rivers run free, the forests breathe again, and the creatures of the earth rejoice—not with trembling, but with song.

5.Prophets in the Pipeline — Faith, Resistance, and the Ethics of Oil

“When the earth is burning, even the silent antelope begins to pray.” — Nandi Proverb (Kenya). Across East Africa, the oil pipeline cuts not only through land but through moral conscience. It is a project that tests the soul of a continent—an altar where some offer praise to prosperity, and others lament the price of progress. But in the margins of official narratives, a spiritual uprising simmers: led by imams, priests, bishops, nuns, herbalists, traditional elders, and youth—each one crying out against what they see not as mere industrial expansion, but as a theological betrayal. For what does it profit a nation to gain billions in GDP and lose the soil, the songbirds, the sacred groves, and the spirit of the people?

The ethics of oil, when viewed through a prophetic lens, are deeply troubling. In every tradition—Christianity, Islam, African Indigenous religion—land is not lifeless matter but a living covenant. In the Bible, the earth is described as “groaning” under the weight of human sin (Romans 8:22), and judgment comes not only through war or famine, but also through environmental collapse. Similarly, in African cosmologies, to wound the land without ritual or consent is to provoke ancestral wrath. The Acholi speak of the “cen”—a spiritual disturbance caused by improper land relations. In Yoruba belief, Aje—the spirit of the earth mother—is believed to withdraw her blessing from communities that desecrate nature.

It is in this cosmological and theological tension that faith leaders have risen. In 2022, the Ugandan Joint Christian Council (UJCC) issued a pastoral letter urging government leaders to re-evaluate the EACOP project, warning that “development without justice is a curse wrapped in statistics.”³⁰ In 2023, the Inter-Religious Council of Tanzania hosted a public lamentation ceremony, where verses from the Qur’an were recited alongside African praise chants for endangered rivers. Faith, in this context, is not silent. It is insurgent. It is incarnate in the bodies of monks chained to bulldozers and pastors visiting displaced widows in Hoima and Kyotera.

And these prophets are not only clergy—they are young. Movements such as Fridays for Future Uganda and Green Faith Africa have mobilized students, artists, and theologians into climate advocacy, prayer walks, and direct action. In 2024, youth activists staged a 40-day Lenten fast outside the French Embassy in Kampala, demanding TotalEnergies divest from EACOP. They carried crosses carved from deforested mahogany and wore sackcloth stitched with the names of endangered wetlands. Their message echoed the ancient prophets: “Woe to those who build riches on the backs of the poor.” (Habakkuk 2:9)

Theologians, too, are crafting new paradigms. Dr. Esther Munene, a Kenyan eco-theologian, argues that Africa must reject “extractive eschatologies”—theologies that see the earth as disposable because of a coming heavenly reward.³² Instead, she calls for creation theology rooted in Ubuntu—a vision where the well-being of the land is inseparable from the well-being of people. This is not a romantic return to the past, but a radical re-centering of justice in theological ethics.

The ethical failures of EACOP are therefore not technical—they are moral. The project violates the principle of intergenerational justice, stealing from unborn generations in the name of short-term gains. It contradicts subsidiarity, by ignoring the voices of local communities in decision-making. And it betrays the common good, as defined in Catholic Social Teaching and African communal ethics alike.³³ One cannot bless oil extraction while cursing the displaced. One cannot sing worship songs in cathedrals powered by land stolen from subsistence farmers.

Indeed, even international faith bodies have sounded the alarm. In 2023, the World Council of Churches, the Muslim Council of Elders, and the Pagan Federation International issued a rare joint statement condemning EACOP as “a spiritual and ecological injustice,” urging shareholders to divest.³⁴ They invoked not just carbon footprints, but “soulprints”—the moral residue left by projects that privilege profit over people.

Yet, the prophets are often mocked. Like Jeremiah, they are called doom-sayers. Like Amos, they are dismissed as unqualified. Like Jesus, they are threatened with crucifixion by the powerful. In July 2024, Reverend Sr. Maria Nabirye, a Catholic nun and vocal EACOP critic, was arrested under the guise of “inciting unrest.”³⁵ Her only crime was leading prayer vigils in affected villages, where she read Psalm 24:1—“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it”—while blessing contaminated wells with holy water and protest.

These modern-day prophets remind us that resistance is not only political; it is liturgical. To light a candle in a church near a destroyed riverbank is an act of defiance. To pour libation on cracked earth is to reclaim spiritual authority. To invoke the names of ancestors, saints, and martyrs is to declare that no bulldozer can erase memory. This is theology with soil under its nails and justice in its breath. “The mouth that speaks truth shall be hated by kings.” — Igbo Proverb. Let the world understand: this is not just a pipeline—it is a crucifix. And upon it hang the bodies of the poor, the silenced, the sacred forests, the unborn. But resurrection is rising. The stone is being rolled. From the margins, the prophets sing. From the ashes, justice shall sprout.

6.Blood in the Soil — Ancestral Land, Displacement, and the Politics of Compensation

“To lose land is to lose the ground where your name was planted.” — Dinka Proverb (South Sudan).The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) does not merely displace people—it dismembers memory. It trespasses upon shrines, cemeteries, homesteads, and forests that have, for generations, served not just as property but as spiritual DNA. In African thought, land is not a commodity to be bought and sold—it is a living body, a burial shroud, a naming ground. To uproot a family from ancestral land without ritual, justice, or proper restitution is to sever the umbilical cord of identity. Yet this is the silent violence beneath EACOP’s gleaming corporate logos and statistical projections.

As of 2024, more than 100,000 individuals across Uganda and Tanzania have been displaced or affected by the pipeline’s construction.³⁶ In districts such as Kyotera, Buliisa, and Hoima, the stories echo: families promised fair compensation received only partial payments years later, often at rates far below market value. Some were coerced into signing land acquisition agreements they neither understood nor consented to.³⁷ Women, who traditionally serve as custodians of land for food and family, were often excluded from compensation discussions altogether, deepening gender injustice and impoverishment.

The Human Rights Watch 2023 report titled “Our Land is No More” details harrowing testimonies of farmers denied access to their gardens after valuation, forced to watch crops rot while awaiting a compensation that never came.³⁹ “I was told to stop cultivating,” said one widow from Kasenyi, “but three planting seasons have passed, and no money has come. My children now beg to eat.” Her story is not isolated. It is systemic. The very soil that once fed generations is now fenced, surveilled, and signed away in the name of national development.

But it is not just about crops. The pipeline slices through burial grounds, spiritual trees, ritual rivers, and sacred termite mounds—sites that are, in many African cultures, part of the invisible architecture of being. In Toro and Banyoro cosmologies, ancestral graves are considered “living places,” and relocation of a tomb without ritual is believed to bring misfortune not only to the family, but to the community and the land itself.⁴⁰ Yet many families were offered no chance to exhume, perform cleansing rites, or rebury with dignity. Graves were bulldozed. Spirits, uninvited, were dislocated.

This is not merely a cultural oversight—it is a theological crisis. In the Bible, Naboth’s vineyard becomes a site of divine judgment because King Ahab, seduced by imperial greed, seizes ancestral land without consent (1 Kings 21). God’s fury in that story is not just political—it is covenantal. Ancestral land was not to be sold, because it was both inheritance and divine trust. This resonates powerfully with Leviticus 25:23, which declares, “The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine; you are but strangers and sojourners with me.” What, then, shall be said of a modern state that sells the soil without remembering the spirits who sleep within it?

The politics of compensation under EACOP also reveal profound structural inequality. Compensation values were not only delayed but deeply undervalued. In some regions, the average compensation per acre was between UGX 2 million and UGX 3.5 million (approx. $500–$950 USD),⁴¹ while resettlement costs for similar land, with access to water and schools, exceeded three times that amount. Affected persons were left landless, unable to afford replacement land, or forced to migrate to unfamiliar territories where language, land use patterns, and tribal identity posed new barriers. Entire clans are now dispersed—fractured like broken calabashes.

Even more troubling is the legal silencing of resistance. In 2023, several affected persons in Uganda filed suit against the Uganda National Oil Company and TotalEnergies, seeking fair compensation.⁴² The case, still pending in Uganda’s High Court, has already triggered backlash: community leaders have been visited by security agents, and local NGOs supporting them face deregistration threats. Here, the pipeline reveals itself not just as infrastructure, but as ideology—a system that privileges economic growth over ancestral grief, foreign capital over cultural covenant.

Meanwhile, community rituals of protest and memory continue, like whispered defiance. In Buliisa, elders have erected small “shrines of resistance”—stones encircled by millet, ash, and palm fronds—where names of the dead are spoken aloud each evening as the trucks pass. In Tanzania’s Nzega District, displaced women gather each new moon to chant songs that translate: “They moved us, but not our spirits.” These acts may seem small, but they are profoundly theological. They insist that no bulldozer can erase belonging. “The land knows who walked upon it.” — Sukuma Proverb (Tanzania).Policy must no longer treat compensation as arithmetic. It must become an act of remembrance, healing, and justice. True compensation cannot be measured merely in shillings, but in dignity restored, in rituals performed, in land given back, or at least respectfully mourned. Otherwise, Africa shall have built its modernity on a curse—one whispered by graves without names and homes without return.

Section 7: The Earth Cries Out, and So Must We — Towards a Prophetic Theology of Resistance and Restoration

“There is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.” — Ecclesiastes 3:7. In every spiritual cosmology born of African soil—from the Buganda ancestral shrines to the Nkoya forests of Zambia—land is not a passive object, but a living covenant. It breathes, mourns, remembers. When desecrated, it does not forget. When silenced, it finds prophets. And now, the land cries out beneath the steel throat of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), choking on contracts inked in secrecy, blood, and colonial echo. Theology, if it is to remain faithful, must respond—not with timid neutrality, but with fire, with lamentation, with resistance. This is not merely an ecological crisis. It is a spiritual war for the soul of a continent.

Africa’s theologians must reject the anaemic gospel of development unrooted in justice. For what good is oil that poisons rivers? What legacy is wealth if it is smeared with ancestral eviction? Theologian Allan Boesak warns, “There is no such thing as neutral theology in the face of oppression; silence is complicity.”[1] This moment demands not silence, but a thunderous resurrection of African theological voices—prophets who walk barefoot into the palaces of power with cracked gourds of truth. The theology of oil must give way to the theology of earth, justice, and sacred memory.

Consider the wisdom of the Acholi saying: “Pe acel keken ki i gang”—one does not live in the homestead alone. This communal ethic is shattered when ancestral land is expropriated by multinational oil giants, with governments playing Judas in suits. The World Bank’s 2024 report confirms that over 19,500 individuals across Uganda and Tanzania have faced displacement due to EACOP, often without proper compensation or consent[2]. Behind these numbers are graves exhumed, fruit trees uprooted, and sacred rivers diverted. One woman from the Kakumiro District, whose family land was taken, lamented in a court submission: “They gave me money for my land, but not for my mother’s grave that lay beneath the mango tree. How does one price an ancestor?”

In such desecration, theology must weep and wail. The prophets of old—Jeremiah, Amos, Micah—would have torn their garments. The church must not remain clothed in corporate diplomacy while the land is stripped bare. A prophetic theology must interrogate: Who profits from the pipeline? Who suffers? Where are the displaced now? What reparations are owed? And most hauntingly—what must be done for the land to forgive us?

Resistance must take many forms: sermons that unmask environmental sin, catechesis rooted in ecological justice, and liturgies that remember the soil as sacred. But resistance must also be practical. Faith communities must organize, educate, and challenge. In 2023, a coalition of Ugandan and Tanzanian church leaders issued a joint pastoral letter denouncing EACOP as “a moral injury and an intergenerational theft.”[4] This is the right beginning. But the call is for more: public theology, street theology, embodied theology. Resistance that is both biblical and barefoot.

And let us not forget the children—the future generation who will inherit the scars we leave behind. According to UNICEF, over 70% of East African children live in rural areas, directly dependent on clean land and water for survival[5]. A poisoned earth is not merely a political failure. It is a sin against the unborn. Proverbs 13:22 reminds us, “A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children.” What inheritance are we leaving? A scorched field? An oil-stained grave?

Africa’s theological imagination must therefore rise, not only in lament but in re-visioning. Let us reclaim the language of the land: call rivers “teachers,” mountains “elders,” and forests “cathedrals.” Let us read scripture through the eyes of displaced farmers and mourning trees. Let us gather at the foot of the pipeline not only with protests, but with prayers, with sacred songs, with rituals of resistance that remind the world: The land is holy, and its groans are not to be ignored.

For in the words of a Congolese proverb: “When the earth burns your feet, you will remember the ancestors.” EACOP has made the earth burn. Now is the time to remlember.

Conclusion: The Cry Beneath the Oil – A Prophetic Summons to Justice, Soil, and Soul

In the shadow of EACOP’s steel ambition, there rises a deeper cry—a cry not only of displaced families or dying rivers, but of history itself weeping for the memory of justice long deferred. It is the cry of Obunyatsi (truth) buried under political deals and foreign greed, of ancestral land turned into collateral for foreign capital, and of oil that glistens like black gold but runs thick with betrayal. Africa has danced with empire before, and each time she has paid with her lifeblood. The DRC’s coltan, Angola’s diamonds, Nigeria’s oil—all have sung the same tragic dirge: of abundance without benefit, of wealth without wellness. Uganda and Tanzania now approach that same altar, where promises of progress demand the sacrifice of people’s homes, forests’ lungs, and rivers’ veins. The EACOP, stretching like a serpent from Hoima to Tanga, has been framed as a symbol of regional integration and economic elevation. Yet beneath the polished rhetoric lies the crude reality—70,000 people across both countries face displacement, and over 2,000 square kilometers of biodiverse ecosystems risk permanent disruption.

The evidence of this pipeline’s harm is not theoretical—it is etched into the soil, sung in the broken songs of the evicted, and felt in the groaning of the land. The World Wildlife Fund has warned that over 510 kilometers of the pipeline will cut through biodiversity hotspots, including the Murchison Falls National Park and the Taala Forest Reserve[^2]. The Lake Victoria basin, which supports 40 million people, lies directly downstream of potential oil spill zones. This is not merely an environmental threat—it is a humanitarian time bomb. A spill would decimate not only Uganda’s water lifeline but also fisheries, farming livelihoods, and regional food security. And the spiritual injury is no less profound. Many of the lands seized for EACOP hold ancestral graves, sacred groves, and ceremonial shrines, particularly among the Banyoro and Baganda, where the spirits of the dead are believed to guard the fertility of the land. To violate these sites is to disrupt the covenant between the living and the dead. As one elder lamented during a grievance hearing: “You have taken our land, but you cannot buy our gods.”

Moreover, the pipeline has exposed Africa’s fragile sovereignty in the face of neo-colonial finance. TotalEnergies, a French multinational, holds the largest stake in EACOP—62% of project ownership is foreign[^3]. While Uganda and Tanzania claim control, their role in decision-making is diluted by debt arrangements and transnational influence. The pipeline’s construction is also being backed by Chinese financiers, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, creating a hybrid dependency on East and West. The project is expected to emit over 34 million tonnes of CO₂ annually—more than the annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania combined[^4]. This makes EACOP not only an environmental crime but a theological crisis. How can nations that contributed least to global warming now embrace a project that deepens their complicity in planetary destruction? Is this not the biblical Esau’s exchange—a birthright traded for a bowl of oil?

The Church, too, must answer for its silence or complicity. The prophetic tradition, from Amos to Jesus, demands that we speak truth to power, that we lift the cause of the poor, and that we proclaim Jubilee—not exploitation. Yet in Uganda and Tanzania, many religious leaders have been courted into silence, seduced by donations or threatened into neutrality. Only a handful—such as the Africa Faith and Justice Network and GreenFaith International—have resisted, declaring that climate justice is gospel truth, and that environmental destruction is spiritual sin. As the Book of Numbers 35:33 reminds us: “Do not pollute the land where you are… Bloodshed pollutes the land.” Indeed, in this case, oil pollutes not only the land but the future.

What then must be done? The answer lies not in halting development, but in reimagining it. True African progress cannot be built on pipelines that leak injustice. It must be rooted in Obuntubulamu—the interconnectedness of people, planet, and spirit. This means centering community consent, ecological wisdom, renewable energy transitions, and inclusive policy-making. It means learning from Kenya’s community-owned wind farms in Lake Turkana, or Ghana’s solar micro-grids, rather than repeating the colonial extractivist model. It means invoking the ancient wisdom of our ancestors: “He who sells his mother’s land for riches will die a stranger in his own bloodline.” And it means that the youth, who will inherit the legacy of either resistance or ruin, must rise with fire in their eyes and seed in their hands. In the end, the pipeline will age, rust, and be forgotten. But the memory of whether Africa bowed to the logic of plunder or stood in the dignity of her people will endure. This is not just a policy debate; it is a prophetic reckoning. The land is speaking. The rivers are roaring. And the people are rising. Let them be heard.

References

1. African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. (2021). Report of the Working Group on Extractive Industries, Environment and Human Rights Violations in Africa. Banjul, The Gambia.

2. Amnesty International. (2023). A Human Rights Tragedy in the Making: The East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/

3. Bassey, N. (2012). To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa. Pambazuka Press.

4. Booth, D., & Golooba-Mutebi, F. (2021). Oil in Uganda: Hard bargaining and complex politics in East Africa. Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

5. Goegraphy of Risk Africa. (2023). EACOP and the Displacement Dilemma: A Regional Review. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

6. Global Witness. (2022). Crude Awakening: How EACOP Puts Climate, Communities and Biodiversity at Risk. Retrieved from https://www.globalwitness.org/

7. Human Rights Watch. (2023). Uganda/Tanzania: Oil Pipeline Project Harms Communities. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/

8. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). (2022). A Nightmare Pipeline: East Africa’s Path to Environmental and Human Catastrophe. Paris: FIDH.

9. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2023). Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Geneva: United Nations.

10. Kaiama, O. (2019). Oil and the Collapse of African Cosmologies. Journal of African Eco-Spiritual Studies, 5(2), 49–66.

11. Kituo Cha Sheria. (2022). Legal Brief on Land Acquisition in the EACOP Corridor: Justice Deferred? Nairobi, Kenya.

12. Kwame Nkrumah. (1965). Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd.

13. Le Monde Afrique. (2024). EACOP Faces EU Sanctions Threat Over Environmental Risks. Retrieved from https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/

14. Mbembe, A. (2001). On the Postcolony. University of California Press.

15. Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, Uganda. (2022). EACOP National Report on Compensation and Resettlement Implementation. Kampala, Uganda.

16. NAPE (National Association of Professional Environmentalists). (2023). Defending Ancestral Lands: The Fight Against Oil in East Africa. Kampala, Uganda.

17. Oloya, P. (2023). The Forest Remembers: Indigenous Communities and Sacred Ecologies in East Africa. Nairobi: African Indigenous Research Collective.

18. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2023). Illicit Financial Flows in Extractives: Africa’s Leaky Pipeline. Paris: OECD Publishing.

19. Oxfam International. (2022). Unfair Deal: EACOP’s Impact on Land Rights and Livelihoods. Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.org/

20. Pew Research Center. (2023). Religion and Environmental Attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, D.C.

21. Religious Leaders’ Environmental Declaration. (2023). Ancestral Earth, Sacred Duty: Faith Leaders Against EACOP. Kampala: Faith and Environment Council of Uganda.

22. Reuters. (2023). Uganda-Tanzania Oil Project to Begin Construction Despite Widespread Criticism. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/

23. Tutu, D. (2004). God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. Doubleday.

24. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). (2023). Africa Environment Outlook 2023: Resilience and Climate Justice. Nairobi: UNEP.

25. United Nations Human Rights Council. (2023). Universal Periodic Review: Tanzania and Uganda. Geneva: UNHRC.

26. UNICEF. (2022). Environmental Displacement and Child Vulnerability in East Africa. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/

27. World Bank. (2023). Uganda Economic Update: Building Inclusive Growth in the Face of Oil Investments. Washington, D.C.

28. World Wildlife Fund (WWF). (2023). Biodiversity at Risk: EACOP’s Threat to East Africa’s Protected Areas. Retrieved from https://www.worldwildlife.org/

29. Yash Tandon. (2008). Ending Aid Dependence. Fahamu Books.

Traditional Wisdom and African Proverbs (Unpublished Oral Sources)

Lugbara Proverb (DRC/Uganda): “The land is not silent; it groans when you uproot its bones.”

Swahili Proverb (Tanzania): “Mti ulioza hauwezi kushikilia ndege — a rotten tree cannot hold a bird.”

Acholi Proverb (Uganda): “The vulture does not cry for the meat—it cries for the land it took it from.”

Yoruba Saying (Nigeria): “Ẹni tí kó gbogbo ilẹ̀ rẹ̀ jù, ò ní fi ibi kó fọ̀nà” — “He who sells all his land will have no place to pass.”

Nkamba, J. (2018). Wisdom of the Ancestors: African Proverbs and Environmental Ethics. Ibadan University Press.