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By Adewale Sanyaolu
Barring any last minute change, the $5 billion Africa Energy Bank (AEB) is set to commence operations by March 2025. The AEB is being established by Africa Petroleum Producers Organisation(APPO) in collaboration with the Afriexim Bank.
Secretary General of APPO, Mr.Omar Farouk Ibrahim, disclosed this on Tuesday at the 13th Practical Nigerian Content (PNC) Forum in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
Already, Ibrahim said the Africa Energy Bank which needs $5 billion investment to commence operations has secured $2.5 investments from member countries.
The APPO boss said Nigeria won the hosting right for the establishment of AEB Headquarters in July 2024, after it competed with Ghana, Algeria, South Africa, and Benin Republic.
Going down memory lane, he said for the 70 to 100 years that Africa has been producing oil and gas, it has relied heavily outside the Africa continent for all it takes to produce, refine and process and market its oil and gas resources.
However, he said not until 2015, when the world gathered in Paris, France to take a global paradigm shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy which was tactically called energy transition.
He said from 2015 till date, the global North as they now prefer to be referred to have aggressively pursued that agenda and are working towards it.
Regrettably, he said that singular decision has far-reaching implications for Africa as we largely depend on the resources from oil and gas from these developed economies to survive.
He worried that if Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy resources they now revile to develop, can Africa afford the luxury of abandoning them? This, he said, is not the case in Africa because many economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas resources.
“Better still, with a terrain rich in more than 125 billion barrels of proven reserves and more than 600 trillion cubic feet of gas, Africa must make the most of it to ensure access to modern energy for nearly a billion of its population.
To do this, the only solution lies in taking control of the industry, and particularly of its financing, because, as everyone knows, money is the sinews of war,’’
Ibrahim added that the African continent is the one with the largest proportion of its population living with energy poverty.
“Are we now going to leave these resources in the ground because those on whom we have been depended have decided to move away from the resources?
He added that having decided to move away from the resources, the Western World have now come up with policies that will make attracting funding for investors from Africa to develop fossil fuel very difficult and impossible to access.
APPO Secretary General said Africa will not accept this because we need to use resources from fossil fuel production to transform our society the same way they used oil and gas to transform their own societies in 150 years.
In 150 years, he said these countries emitted 2,500 giga tons of emissions into the atmosphere and now that it is our turn to change the living conditions of our people, they are now saying fossil fuel is dangerous to the environment.
