Africa’s oil and gas industry faces the challenge of the technology– upstream, midstream and downstream.
For the many decades that Africa has been producing oil and gas, with the exception of a very few countries, it has been heavily dependent on external technologies and expertise. The international oil and service companies have located their oil and gas research, development and innovation centers outside Africa and Africa is made to be consumer of their technologies, without access to the know-how or the patents.
To address this challenge, APPO has created the Forum of Directors of Oil and Gas Research, Development and Innovations centers in APPO Member Countries where the leaders of these institutions regularly meet to share notes on the research and technology challenges of the industry.
Our objective is to soon have regional centers of excellence in the various sectors of the industry. When we have done that, we can pool our resources together to pursue researches of common interest. That way, the current practice where each African oil and gas producing country wants to be seen to excel in all the sectors without excelling in any, due to poor resources, will be put to an end.
The last meeting of the Forum of Directors of Research, Development and Innovation took place in Algiers last month. It has been the place where important decisions were taken for the pooling of research efforts on the continent.
