Lagos, Nigeria, September 6, 2018// – The oil and gas sectors of several African countries have shown limited positive impacts on other sectors of the continent’s economy, energy expert, Mr. Oladeji Olawale has said.
He said the development is largely due to the lack of relevant infrastructure to drive the needed growths in the sectors.
Olawale, a co-convener of the Sub-Sahara African Oil, Gas and Energy Summit, spoke yesterday (Wednesday) at a pre-event event press conference, where he said the oil and gas exporting countries in the sub-Saharan in Africa could derive more benefits from the sectors by stimulating the development of forwarding and backward relationships within their national economies.
These nations, he said, could also leverage the skills and technology acquired from developing such relationships to serve other sectors of the economy in a sustainable manner.
He added: “To attain this objective, long-standing challenges such as weak infrastructure, insufficient access to financing, low education and skills, lack of technology transfer, and in several instances insufficient progress in improving the governance, including transparency and accountability frameworks, need to be addressed.
Key operators in the Sub-Sahara oil, gas and energy industry will converge in Nairobi, Kenya next month to facilitate needed investments into the oil and gas industries and explore possibilities of the gas revolution in the region.
Tagged, ‘Sub-Sahara Africa Oil, Gas and Energy Summit, (SSAOGES 2018), Olawale said the forum is expected to open honest conversations among stakeholders, policy makers, infrastructure development financiers, international oil companies, national companies, power generating companies, renewable energy and power distribution companies with the goal of fashioning out efficient ways to begin to develop the needed infrastructure for the energy of the future.
He added that Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, has confirmed his participation and would address experts on prospects of investing in those critical sectors.
Olawale underscored the importance of the summit as he stressed that when we put the projections of the UN and IMF side by side, it shows that Africa has a lot to do to achieve economic prosperity and energy efficiency.
“With increasing population growth, comes increase in demand for energy. Africa as a continent, though, with enough energy reserves to serve its teeming population does not have the infrastructure to produce enough energy to meet the continents need. This scenario will only get worse if urgent steps are not taken to ensure energy efficiency,” he said.
Olawale, further explained that the summit is organised around presentations, panel discussions and breakaway sessions evaluating identified themes bothering on oil and gas and energy infrastructure in Sub-Sahara Africa.
According to him, the summit will help evaluate the penetration of the oil and gas industry into various parts of the economy, foster and build inter-regional partnerships by focusing on cooperation among nations in the Sub-Sahara Africa, explore and create better connections between the gas industry and other domestic sectors.
This article was originally published on independent.ng.
