By Patience Chat Moses
The Secretary General of the African Petroleum Producers Organization (APPO), Omar Farouk, has called on all African countries to invest in energy infrastructure to meet up with developing countries.
Farouk who was speaking at the sidelines of the ongoing African Energy Week (AEW) in Cape Town, South Africa added that for nearly 100 years Africa has focused only on the production of oil and gas for exports, without developing national, regional or continental energy infrastructure which would have created home group market for our energy.
His words: “For Africa, for the nearly 100 years that we’ve been producing oil and gas, our focus has been to produce oil and gas for exports, hence we never developed national, regional or continental energy infrastructure which would have created home group market for our energy.
Instead, we were made to believe that our people are too poor to buy energy, so we produce energy for those who can afford it, while we abandon our people to wallow in energy poverty. And because they are too poor to buy energy they are condemned to perpetual poverty.”
He further added that no society has broken from poverty without making energy accessible and affordable.
Speaking with respect to oil and gas institutions, Farouk stated that the Forum of African Member Countries in oil and gas institutions should have an ultimate objective of establishing regional centers of excellence in the various sectors of the industry.
“We have come to a recognition that it does not make sense for each of our member countries to aim to be centers of excellence in the various sectors of the industry.
“Individually none of our countries has all it takes to successfully address all the challenges that we face. By putting our resources together, we have all it takes to do so, and the first regional centers of excellence can be replicated in time.
“On energy markets, it’s important to understand that provision of energy infrastructure is a major prerequisite for the development of energy markets whether national, regional or continental level, he added.