A coalition of climate-change activists pulled off two protests at an African energy conference in London last week - the first delaying the start of proceedings at the venue, while the second caused the cancellation of a gala dinner at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. A small number of protestors from Extinction Rebellion (XR), Jubilee for Climate and ReconOut - representing certain climate action groups in Africa - arrived at the May Fair Hotel close to Green Park before the event was due to begin. Via a collapsible ladder, two protestors climbed onto a balcony above the hotel frontage and unfurled a banner emblazened with End Oil Colonialism, while calling for Justice for Africa and spraying black paint on first-floor windows. Other protestors glued themselves together in the hotel lobby. Some African delegates to the Africa Ener- gies Summit (AES) were rather non-plussed by events and ignored the protestors while waiting to gain entry to the hotel which had been cordoned off by police. Other delegates calmly discussed the issues with protestors. XR disrupted another event the next evening at Gordon Ramsey's Heddon Street restaurant, which resulted in the Metropolitan Police advising AES to cancel the gala dinner. Citing the International Energy Agency, the Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change and the International Renewable Energy Agency, the protestors want fossil-fuel exploration and development activity in Africa to stop immediately, supplanted by renewables investments, warning that otherwise 700 million people on the continent could be displaced by climate change.
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