Africa urged to optimise refinery capacity to alleviate poverty

For Africa to overcome energy poverty and achieve energy security, there is a need to invest in oil and gas infrastructure and refineries.

This will help accelerate intra-African oil and gas trade and guarantee energy security on the continent.

The call was made at the Africa Energy and Infrastructure Forum and Awards in Accra.

The event brought together policymakers, private sector leaders, industry titans, civil society leaders, and stakeholders on a single platform to discuss solutions to some of Africa’s energy infrastructure, local content, and pressing energy challenges.

The Africa Energy and Infrastructure Forum and Awards organised by African Leadership Magazine focused on “Building the Sustainable Future of the African Energy Industry”.

According to the African Development Bank, Africa needs a minimum of 10 billion dollars annually in the next 10 years to help address energy infrastructure gaps.

Speaking at the forum, the Special Advisor to the South African Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Mr. Sello Helepi, said South Africa is working to replace fossil fuels with gas in the transportation sector.

He said to solve energy poverty, African states must work together.

“We believe that it is important that the refinery should not just recover oil, refine it and trade with it and send it away. The refining capacity on the continent is not at an optimal level, where we need it to be,” he explained.

The Minister of State at the Presidency, Mrs. Freda Prempeh, called for harmonisation of efforts in the sub-region to accelerate energy trade.

Minister of State at the Presidency, Mrs. Freda Prempeh

Mrs. Prempeh said, “disparities in the organisation of the sector and the diversity of regulations, there is a strong need for harmonization to create a coherent stable and attractive framework in the sub-region. Member States are still far from allowing free trade provided for in the ECOWAS Energy protocol. Uncertainty about the adequate degree of openness to competition at the National level.”

African Leadership Magazine Group Managing Editor, Kingsley Okeke said the forum “is the only way we can encourage local content, the only way we can drive those conversations to people and look inward and say do we have the resources? How do we as Africans develop our resources and not subject our resources to the West?”

Awards were presented to stakeholders for their contribution to the development of the energy sector.