Oil doesn’t just power our lives. It also fuels violence. The new scramble for Africa – about 120 years after the first one – is inflaming conflicts that could dog the rest of this century. This remake of history could have some even nastier endings than the Victorian version.

On Tuesday Russia and China were accused by Amnesty International of breaching international law by arming the Sudanese militias that have murdered almost 300,000 people in Darfur in the past three years. Russian helicopters and bombers have been used to strike targets in Darfur. Some of these planes were apparently painted white, with UN lettering. So while the UN debates whether to send in peacekeepers, and tries to isolate the Sudanese regime orchestrating the genocide, two of the five permanent members of its Security Council are aiding and abetting that regime. And someone is brazenly forging the UN’s signature.

How can they get away with this? It is clear that all governments care less for international niceties when a whole continent of copper, bauxite and oil is up for grabs. The rising price of oil, the waning of French influence and the cessation of civil wars in some African states have prompted expeditions by a host of countries. The US, keen to diversify its oil supplies, is expected to get 25 per cent of its oil from West Africa by 2015. China already sources a quarter of its crude oil from Africa, about 6 per cent of which comes from Sudan. The problem there is that the Sudanese regime has been emboldened by the Chinese pipeline that sucks out 350,000 barrels a day. It has defied every UN initiative to resolve the Darfur crisis. The refugee camps grow daily, and the conflict is spreading to Chad and the Central African Republic.

In the midst of this untold misery, China’s President is reported to have promised to finance a new presidential palace in Sudan. If that is true, it would be a tragic return to the old cliché that aid funds despots and their palaces. Paradoxically this comes just as Western aid agencies have finally started to demand more accountability from dubious governments.

The Sudanese example is utterly shocking even in a continent that is looking more and more like the new Klondike. In Angola, tipped to overtake Nigeria as Africa’s biggest oil exporter, Russians who used to arm guerrillas are now helping to close oil deals. Former KGB and even Mossad agents have been sighted in the diamond-rich Congo, where the De Beers monopoly has been broken.

What is often described as exploitation should also present the best opportunity African states have ever had to lift themselves out of poverty. Annual foreign direct investment in the continent has hit an historic high of £20 billion, up almost 80 per cent in two years. The money is going mainly to oil, gas and mining in Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Sudan. But read back the list and see how few of those are democracies.

There is not much trickle-down either. The people of the oil-rich Niger Delta still squat in darkness, with no electric light, while the flares of the oil refineries bronze their sky. The kidnapping of four oil workers there yesterday was barely reported: there have been nine such incidents in the past two weeks.

The age-old curse of oil is hitting parts of Africa in precisely the same way that it has hit Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. The higher the oil price rises, the more the profits entrench the despots. Remember: Vladimir Putin was a more moderate leader when oil was at $25 a barrel than at $60 a barrel. Patronage always dampens demands for democracy.

China itself may go in the opposite direction. It should benefit not only from the resulting economic growth, but hopefully also from a middle class that will eventually demand openness and democracy. But in its hunger for oil it is helping to build a potential for conflict as great as the original carving up of Africa.

This potential comes not only from aggressive African elites seeking to settle old scores. It will also be exacerbated by climate change. The Darfur conflict was originally, in part, about water. Lengthening drought cycles provoked outbreaks of violence similar to those in Sri Lanka last year, when Tamil Tigers shut off water supplies to farmers.

The CIA has cautioned that we face an era of “hydrological warfare” in which lakes and rivers become as vital to national security as armies or crops. Some of these wars over water are expected to be fought in the same places that now produce oil. sub-Saharan Africa is one such region. The Middle East is another. As well as being the world’s greatest oil producer, the Middle East is also the most water-depleted region. And almost 90 per cent of its usable water crosses national borders. The oil-rich elites need to work now on cooperative methods of conservation. If they do not, Western aid agencies will find themselves footing even greater bills.

Oil and water are both fundamental resources. But unlike oil, water has no known substitutes. This leads to a fairly obvious conclusion: we need, sooner rather than later, to put an end to the hydrocarbon society.

In 30 years’ time we could have a brave new world containing two types of country: those that are dependent on unspeakable dictators for their heat and light, and those that are free. The example set by the second could eventually galvanise the first. When addiction to oil makes some nations willing to arm one bent on genocide, and others to turn a blind eye, it is time to break a habit that will injure those who produce oil as much as those who consume it.

Times Recommends

• Ted Hughes was a prophet of climate change
• Health & safety can damage your reasoning
• It’s Big Brother’s stupidity that scares me