ACCRA, Ghana — Africa must urgently increase investment in oil, gas, power infrastructure and renewable energy to close its widening energy-access gap and accelerate industrialisation, the Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Producers Group (IPPG) has said.
Speaking at the opening of AOW: Energy 2026 in Ghana, the IPPG chairman said Africa faced a paradox of possessing some of the world’s largest hydrocarbon and renewable energy resources while remaining the world’s most energy-poor continent.
He called for greater African ownership of energy assets, stronger regional markets, increased domestic financing and expanded infrastructure to ensure the continent’s natural resources are used not only for exports but also to power African economies.
The IPPG represents 34 indigenous Nigerian exploration and production companies, which the chairman said now account for more than half of Nigeria’s crude oil and gas production following the transfer of several onshore and shallow-water assets from international oil companies to indigenous operators.
According to the IPPG chairman, Africa has more than 125 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves and more than 620 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, representing roughly 9 per cent and 8 per cent of global oil and gas reserves respectively.
Yet Africa attracts only about 6 per cent of global exploration spending and upstream capital, despite the scale of its resource base.
He described the mismatch between Africa’s resource endowment and investment flows as one of the continent’s biggest economic opportunities.
“Africa today stands at an unprecedented crossroad,” he said, arguing that the continent must move from simply exporting raw resources to using them as a foundation for industrialisation, employment creation and affordable energy access.
The chairman said Africa produces about 8 million barrels of crude oil per day but has insufficient refining capacity to meet its growing demand, forcing the continent to spend more than $60 billion annually on refined petroleum imports.
He also cited Africa’s natural gas production of approximately 262 billion cubic metres in 2025, compared with domestic consumption of about 185 billion cubic metres.
The result, he said, is a continent where energy resources are exported while millions of people remain without reliable access to electricity.
The IPPG chairman said nearly 600 million Africans remain without access to electricity, accounting for close to 85 per cent of the world’s electricity-access deficit.
He added that nearly one billion Africans continue to rely on wood and charcoal for cooking, with the resulting health and environmental consequences disproportionately affecting women and children.
The figures, he argued, demonstrate why Africa cannot afford an energy strategy based solely on exporting hydrocarbons or rapidly abandoning them before adequate alternatives are available.
“Africa’s energy must first power Africa,” he said.
He called for increased development of gas-to-power, gas-to-fertiliser, petrochemicals, refining, LPG and other energy-intensive industries capable of creating jobs and strengthening domestic economies.
Nigeria’s experience, according to the IPPG chairman, demonstrates the potential of indigenous participation to reshape Africa’s upstream petroleum industry.
He said indigenous Nigerian operators accounted for less than 3 per cent of national production more than three decades ago but now contribute more than 50 per cent of the country’s crude oil and gas output.
He said about 200,000 barrels per day of additional production had been added to Nigeria’s output by three indigenous operators over the previous 12 months.
The transition followed the divestment of onshore and shallow-water assets by international oil companies, creating opportunities for Nigerian producers to take control of mature fields.
The IPPG chairman said indigenous companies had demonstrated their ability to revive assets previously considered to be in decline by re-entering idle wells, increasing drilling activity, reducing gas flaring and implementing long-delayed field development plans.
For independent producers, he argued, individual assets carry greater strategic importance because they are often central to the survival and growth of the company rather than one of many assets in a global portfolio.
The chairman attributed the growth of indigenous operators partly to Nigeria’s local-content regime, the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 and executive actions by the current administration.
He said sustained implementation of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act had helped create an environment in which Nigerian companies could build technical and operational capacity.
He urged other African oil-producing countries to draw lessons from Nigeria’s experience as ownership of petroleum assets increasingly shifts towards domestic companies.
The transition, he said, should be accompanied by higher standards of corporate governance, environmental responsibility and community engagement.
“Every barrel and every molecule of gas now under our members’ control comes with an obligation — to invest for the long term, to operate at the highest level of social and environmental responsibility and good governance, and to prove we can deliver lasting value,” he said.
The IPPG chairman also warned that declining access to international capital could undermine Africa’s ability to develop its energy resources.
He said international capital markets and traditional development finance institutions were increasingly reducing exposure to African oil and gas projects as global decarbonisation policies accelerate.
According to the industry estimate cited in his address, more than 150 essential energy projects across Africa have been stalled because of financing constraints.
He argued that the capital retreat was occurring at a particularly difficult time for Africa, given the continent’s enormous electricity deficit and relatively low contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.
The chairman said African countries should therefore develop stronger domestic and regional financing mechanisms rather than depend entirely on international capital.
A central element of his proposal is greater use of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB), established through a partnership between the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization and Afreximbank.
He said the bank, headquartered in Abuja, has an initial capital base of $5 billion, with an ambition to mobilise up to $10 billion during its first phase and grow towards $15 billion by 2030.
The IPPG chairman described the institution as an important mechanism for closing the financing gap created by the retreat of traditional international lenders.
He urged African producers to develop commercially viable projects capable of attracting funding from the bank.
“Africa must look inward and build our own institutional and financial resilience,” he said.
The IPPG also called for a major expansion of Africa’s gas pipeline and processing infrastructure.
The chairman said natural gas already accounts for approximately 40 per cent of Africa’s electricity generation, but the continent’s limited pipeline network prevents it from fully monetising its enormous gas reserves.
He contrasted Africa’s pipeline infrastructure with that of Europe, saying Europe has built more than 200,000 kilometres of interconnected oil and gas trunk pipelines, compared with less than 50,000 kilometres of gas pipelines across Africa.
“Reserves without pipelines are simply stranded molecules benefiting no one,” he said.
He called for gas pipelines, electricity grids and export infrastructure to be treated as strategic continental assets capable of linking producers to consumers across national borders.
The chairman also urged African governments to use the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to create a more integrated energy market.
He cited the West African Gas Pipeline, which transports Nigerian gas to Benin, Togo and Ghana, as evidence that African energy resources can support regional economic integration.
He proposed an AfCFTA Energy Services Protocol to facilitate cross-border energy trade and infrastructure development, as well as a Pan-African Technical Exchange Programme to promote the movement of skills and expertise between African producing countries.
According to him, greater regional integration could create economically viable markets for refining, gas-to-power and petrochemical projects that individual African countries may struggle to support on their own.
The IPPG chairman rejected the idea that Africa must choose between hydrocarbons and renewable energy.
He said Africa has some of the world’s strongest renewable energy potential, including solar, hydropower, geothermal and wind resources, but remains a marginal recipient of global clean-energy investment.
Africa attracted only about 2 per cent of global clean-energy investment last year, he said, despite possessing an estimated 60 per cent of the world’s best solar potential.
He noted that Africa’s installed renewable capacity had increased from about 33GW in 2014 to 82GW in 2025, but argued that the continent remained far below its potential.
“Let me be clear on one point: this is not a case of renewables instead of gas, or gas instead of renewables,” he said. “It is a case of both, deployed together, to close Africa’s energy access gap and power our own industrialisation.”
The IPPG also called for technology transfer and skills development to become contractual requirements in major energy partnerships.
The group proposed greater use of shared training programmes, technical academies, employee secondments and structured technology-transfer arrangements.
The chairman argued that the continent’s future energy workforce must be developed alongside new oil, gas, power and renewable projects.
“The talent that will run Africa’s oil and gas industry a generation from now is being built, or neglected, in the partnerships we sign today,” he said.
The IPPG chairman said Africa’s traditional energy model—exporting crude oil and gas while importing refined products and other energy-intensive goods—had generated government revenue without delivering sufficient industrial transformation.
He called for a new model centred on domestic value addition.
That model, he said, should include refining crude oil locally, expanding gas-to-power, producing fertiliser and petrochemicals, developing LPG for clean cooking and building reliable electricity supplies for manufacturing.
He pointed to the emergence of large-scale refining capacity in Nigeria, including the Dangote Refinery, which he said processes about 650,000 barrels per day, as evidence of the potential benefits of domestic value addition.
The objective, he argued, should be to transform Africa from a supplier of raw energy commodities into a continent capable of processing its resources and using them to support competitive industries.
The IPPG chairman urged African governments to provide investors with fiscal stability, faster approvals and contract certainty.
He called on financiers and insurers to assess African projects based on operational and commercial evidence rather than broad perceptions of African risk.
He also urged international energy companies not to view divestments from African assets as an end to their relationship with the continent.
Instead, he proposed partnerships combining international technology and capital with African ownership, management and local knowledge.
For African independent producers, he said, increased ownership also meant increased responsibility to communities and governments.
“Our license to operate will be judged not by our production numbers alone, but by whether the communities around our fields have electricity, water, jobs and dignity,” he said.
The IPPG’s intervention at AOW: Energy 2026 comes as African governments and energy companies seek new sources of capital, infrastructure and partnerships to develop the continent’s oil, gas and renewable resources while tackling one of the world’s most severe energy-access deficits.
The group said the immediate priority should be to convert Africa’s vast natural-resource endowment into investment, production, industrial capacity and improved living standards.
“We have the geology. We increasingly have operators. What we must now build is the conviction — and the coalition — to convert.”