According to the World Bank, Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. Over the past years, Russia has expressed heightened interest in exploring and producing oil and gas in Africa. Emboldened African leaders and industry executives have accepted proposals, signed several agreements with Russian companies, but little have been achieved in the sector.

With the rapidly changing geopolitical conditions and economic fragmentation fraught with competition and rivalry, African leaders have to understand that Russia may not invest heavily in the oil and gas sector, not even in the needed infrastructure in this industry. From our monitoring, research and several interviews with experts especially inside Africa, we can conclude that the Russia-Ukraine crisis has brought into its fold good opportunities. Russia is energy self-sufficient. It does not need to import energy from Africa, it can only act as a fortified gatekeeper. It has done this several years, primarily to ensure, to a considerable extent, control of Africa’s energy from entering the global market. Popular opinion now is that potential African producers can take advantage to attract investments required to build infrastructure that would enable them to expand exploration, production and exportation to meet the anticipated increase in demand in Europe.

Russia’s interests about possible participation in the oil and gas related projects is perceived by some experts as a bid to control the flow of oil and gas from Africa into Europe. Several experts have written about the implications of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and its meaning for Africa. The crisis casts a long shadow across Africa. There is need to forge a pan-African solidarity and adherence to working towards developing the continent’s natural resources. If this is not done, Africa will continue importing oil and gas.

During June 2021 interview discussions with NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber, a pan-African company that focuses on research, documentation, negotiations and transactions in the energy sector, he expressed the urgent necessity for scaling up Africa’s production capacity in order to achieve universal access to energy. He further noted the challenging tasks and pointed strongly to the need for a transformative partnership-based strategy, (that requires transparency, good governance and policies that could create a favourable investment climate) and that aims at increasing access to energy for all Africans.

Natural gas, affordable and abundant in Africa, has the power to spark significant job creation and capacity-building opportunities, economic diversification and growth. Sustainable development of African economies can only be attained by the development of local industry – by investing in Africans, building up African entrepreneurs and supporting the creation of indigenous companies. It requires cooperative efforts by Africans. Can there be a unified approach to collaborating on issues of energy projects in Africa? NJ Ayuk observes that Africa has already made an indelible mark in the oil and gas........

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