Stakeholders have frowned over the continuous decline in investment opportunities across the African countries, calling for more collaboration among others to drive the needed opportunities to the business operating it Africa.
This were the submission of panelist at which included, Manager Senegal African Partner pool, APP invest in Africa, Emmanuel Mugarura, CEO, Associatino of Uganda oil and gas service providers, Ranti Omole, Vice Chairman, PETAN and other operators.
Identifying five critical principles to focus for the development of African continent, they stated that “There is need for African continent to measure performances from where they started to evaluate their prospect, collaboration and cordination, optimization of technology, developing a data base of doing business and knowledge.
“There is an urgent need to imbibe trust among the Africa continent and the best way to go about it is to ensure quality of service.”
Speaking earlier, Executive Secretary, NCDMB, Simbi Wabote, advocated the urgent need to fomalize policies that would govern and drive business opportunities in the African continent.
according to him, “Regulatory framework, gap analysis, capacity building, funding and incentive, research and development as well as access to market are key component for the growth of businesses across Africa.
“The practice of local content in the oil and gas industry and indeed any sector entails the development of the six key frame work. An enabling regulatory framework backed with the appropriate legislature is very fundamental to local content development and practice.
“A law and decree depending on the political arrangement of a country sets the framwoke and boundaries for all local content practitioners. This is better than directives or policies that are enshrine in a pretense of pushing the boundaries of local content and they are subject to speculations or compliance.
“While the law may not be all encompancy, consideration should be given to other key sectors of the economy rather than just the oil and gas.”
He noted that gap analysis is needed to determing gaps that should be closed in the areas of skills, facilities and infracturces. “The oil and gas industry keeps involving and requires to keep pace to meet the new developments. the locla content goals shows where capacity has been met and where there are gaps and where capacity upgrade is required to guid deployment of resources and investment opportunites.
“Based on our monitoring of the industry, we have moved Nigerian content to 42 percent from less than 5 percent before the advent of the local content board in 2010. four years ago we launched our 10yrs strategic program to move Nigeria content in hte oil and gas iindustry to 70 percent by the year 2027 and variious strategic initiatives under the specified period are been impleemented to ensure the goals are achieved.
“Key lessons learnt as regard the gap analysis is that it is good to have a base line data for available incountry capacities and capabilities to identify the existing gaps and set the target for that closure. There is need to strike the balance between aspirational goals and realistic target setting. bogh are inportant in driving investmetn, motivation and taking cognisance of local pecularities.”
On capacity building, funding and incentives, he said “Structured capacity building interventiion is essential to spur the development of incountry capacities and capabilities. This is not limited only to local manufacturing and infrastuural development but also human capacity development.
“Funding and incentives are essentials to impliment local content programs, develop infrastructue, attracts big investment and keep existing business aflot when required in the African continent.
“We have also progress initiative with the African Petroleum Producers Organizaions, APPO, to pull together funds to support development of oil and gas developmnet project in Africa as funding of Hydrocarbon projects by international barons becomes weaponized under the guise of energy transition.
“We see the opportunity to evolve after teh secretariate in this drive as we seek to position the continent to better address its challenges the right way and in two weeks time we are having a conference in Angola where specifically we would be matching out strategy on how to put funds together within the african continent to support the develoment of our God given Natural resources.”
He called on Africa to invest on research and development programs, adding that “Local content drives where there is roburst reserar and development guidlines to drive development of own grown technology is essential in deepening local content practice. Establishing a robust reserar and eco system is important. citing Isreal’s growth in this at 4.9 percent followed by South Korea at 4.6 percent which Africa not recording any growth in that regard.”
Meanwhile, Chairman, Platform Petroleum Limited, Mr. Dumo Lulu-Briggs, called for capacity building in the petroleum industry.
he said, “The whole idea is to build capacity. We all recognize that capacity building is well important. There are alot of opportunities and we as Africa has not explored it all. We realise that it is important to find some kind of synergy, come up with policies and see if we can influence government policies. It is a bit difficult because we have issues like culture, trust, absense of technology and this are issues we intend to solve going forward.
“What are we doing is to ensure that we are able to come together as Africa, recognize the opportunities that are available to us. Nobody will do it for us except we do it for ourselves. Other continent has found a way to come together and they are roburst and strong, which we can achive in Africa.”
