To tackle global energy transition: Biya crusades speedy start of African Energy Bank.

This is as one of the key solutions to urgently tackle the continent’s oil and gas industry challenges in the wake of global energy transition.

President Biya’s appeal was voiced out in Yaounde on Friday, November 1, by the Prime Minister, Head of Government, Dr Chief Joseph Dion Ngute. 

This was as he represented the Head of State to officially open the 46th Session of APPO Council of Ministers, the supreme political and decision-making body of the 18-member intergovernmental organisation.

The APPO Council of Ministers, it should be said, is made up of Ministers in charge of the hydrocarbons sector of member countries or Plenipotentiaries of African petroleum producing nations.

The Executive General Manager of the National Hydrocarbons Corporation, SNH, who is Plenipotentiary of Cameroon to the APPO Council of Ministers and incumbent President of the APPO, Adolphe Moudiki, was represented at the high-level gathering by the Minister of External Relations, Mbella Mbella. 

Also present was the Minister of Hydrocarbons of the Republic of Congo and Vice President of APPO, Bruno Jean-Richard Itoua; the Secretary General of APPO, Dr Omar Farouk Ibrahim; APPO Executive Board members, experts from the oil and gas sector from member countries.

Members of the diplomatic corps accredited to Yaounde, cabinet ministers among other personalities also lived the opening. 

The African Energy Bank, to be headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria, was created to provide private finance for oil, gas and energy development projects across Africa as global lenders redirect their investments towards alternative energy sources.

Biya drums urgent take off of African Energy Bank 

Speaking on behalf of President Biya at the event, Prime Minister Dion Ngute, said the urgent takeoff of the African Energy Bank will enormously address the continent’s petroleum sector challenges, which, he said “makes it difficult to access finance to develop oil and gas produce”.

“We therefore welcome the decision of the Council of Ministers to explore the possibility of setting up an African Energy Bank. Although a great deal of work still needs to be done before the bank can effectively start its activities, it is undeniable that it will be a fundamental lever for the finalisation of future oil projects in African countries,” Dion Ngute declared on behalf of President Biya. 

He told hydrocarbons ministers from the organsiation that “Cameroon will continue to attach particular importance to achieving the objectives of APPO by always fulfilling its obligation”.

He said Cameroon “will continue to take a keen interest in the deployment of the cooperation platform provided by this organisation”.

Dion Ngute re-echoed the wish of President Biya, whom he described as a “relentless architect of regional integration”, for APPO member countries to push their “common hydrocarbons ideals to new heights”.

The Prime Minister said under the very high impetus of President Biya, “his effective involvement and his decisive decision and action, Cameroon has never spared any effort to make this ideal a reality”.

This ideal of the Head of State, the Prime Minister noted, “was demonstrated more than 20 years ago with Chad-Cameroon Pipeline, one of the largest hydrocarbons integration projects in Sub-Saharan Africa”.

Dion Ngiute said this ideal of President Biya is today, “clearly demonstrated with the correlation of the Yoyo Field in Cameroon and the Yolanda Field in Equatorial Guinea, the project to exploit gas resources that will be carried out within the framework of the bilateral agreement on the exploitation of border fields”.

These, Dion Ngute stated, “is proof that our country plays a major role in Africa as far as cooperation in the oil and gas sector is concerned”. 

He further detailed that this is also proof that Cameroon, under the enlightened leadership of President Biya, “believes in the active solidarity of APPO member countries as a driving force in addressing the challenges in the hydrocarbons sector”.

Dion Ngute then expressed the wish that deliberations at the 46^th APPO Council of Ministers will be “crowned with success” and that its “conclusions will enable our states to make progress in the concrete implementation of policies aimed at meeting the energy needs of our continent”. 

Enter APPO Vice President 

Taking the cue, the Minister of Hydrocarbons of the Republic of Congo and Vice President of APPO, Bruno Jean-Richard Itoua, regretted that the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 has heralded the global paradigm shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energies with policies regularly being churned out by industrialised countries to promote renewable energies and demonise or, in some cases, sanction the use of fossil fuels. 

Disturbed about the implications of energy transition for African countries as oil and gas producers, whose economies rely on oil and gas revenue, Minister Itoua said the APPO Ministerial Council, in 2020, commissioned a study on the Future of the Oil and Gas Industry in Africa in the Light of the Energy Transition. 

He said the study, completed in 2021, highlighted the imminent challenges that the energy transition poses to the African oil and gas industry, including funding, technology and expertise and markets, which APPO has set out to address since 2022. 

The establishment of the African Energy Bank, Minister Itoua added, has as objective to fill the funding gap created by the withdrawal of the traditional financiers of Africa’s oil and gas projects. 

To address the challenge of technology, he said APPO created the Forum of CEOs of APPO National Oil Companies, NOCs, which in turn created the Forum of Directors of Research and Innovation Institutions as well as the Forum of Directors of Training Institutions, with the aim of addressing the technology challenge. 

Tackling the market challenge, Minister Itoua said APPO went into partnership with the Central Africa Business Energy Forum, CABEF, to promote the Central Africa Pipeline System, CAPS. 

“The CAPS is envisioned to act a critical energy infrastructure project that shall link 11 Central African states by a comprehensive pipeline system of crude, products and gas to enable us move energy from areas of plenty to areas of need,” he stated. 

Minister Itoua said “with these developments, Africa is on the way to taking its destiny in its hands”.

He used the occasion to appeal to all APPO member countries to subscribe and pay for their allotted shares to the equity capital of the African Energy Bank. 

“Africa cannot afford not to have the Africa Energy Bank established within the next few months. The energy transition train is moving and shall not wait for Africa. We need to be prepared. We must not be caught unawares,” he stated. 

Itoua added that APPO Secretariat has embarked on a major fundraising campaign to raise the amount needed for the bank to go operational before the end of the first quarter of 2025. 

“I appeal to all Africans, not just APPO Member Countries, to seriously consider becoming members of this forward-looking Bank,” he noted. 

Enter other officials 

Cameroon’s Minister of External Relations, Mbella Mbella, on behalf of APPO President, Adolphe Moudiki, also drummed the need for the bank to go operational, in a bid to tackle financial crisis the sector encounters on the continent.  

On his part, the Secretary General of APPO, Dr Omar Farouk Ibrahim, said the global energy transition challenges are more acute for Africa because unlike other region’s of the world that also produce oil and gas, the continent’s oil and gas producers are the most dependent on foreign financing, technology and markets for their upstream, midstream or downstream projects. 

Dr Omar Farouk told APPO members not to afford not to succeed as the task ahead is not easy. He was categorical that “failure is not an option”. 

The next APPO Council of Ministers session, it should be noted, will be hosted in the Republic of Congo. 

It meets once a year in Ordinary Session, which is held on a rotating basis in member countries and according to alphabetical order, unless otherwise decided by the Council. 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3280 of Monday November 04, 2024