It is with deep emotion and great pride that I welcome you today, on behalf of the African Petroleum Producers Organization, on the occasion of the official launch of the first pan-African platform dedicated to local content.
This launch, from Brazzaville, the headquarters of APPO, in the Republic of Congo, one of the founding countries of our Organization, has a special dimension. It recalls the history of our Organization while illustrating the common ambition that unites all its Member Countries around the development of local content in Africa.
This platform is not only a digital tool; it is the concrete expression of a collective ambition: to enable Africa to capture more added value, strengthen its industrial capacities and create equitable opportunities for all our companies, whether large, medium or small.
Let me emphasise three key points.
First, the unprecedented scope of this initiative. For the first time, our countries are developing a common, accessible and shared space that maps skills, lists industrial capabilities, identifies local suppliers and compiles best practices in local content. This platform creates the visibility our companies needed to connect to projects, investors and markets across the continent. It is an economic intelligence infrastructure at the service of African industrial sovereignty.
Second, the concrete and immediate benefits. Through this platform, we facilitate:
– Putting project leaders in touch with local suppliers, reducing research time and costs;
– standardisation of information and eligibility criteria, ensuring transparency and comparability;
– the development of skills for SMEs through access to standards, training offers and industrial partnerships;
– and, finally, the optimization of public policies on local content through a reliable and up-to-date database, useful to ministries, regulators and financial institutions.
Third, this launch is a beginning, not an end. The success of this platform will depend directly on you; national authorities, sectoral agencies, companies and professional organisations. Without the constant contribution and updating of data by Member Countries, without the commitment of local economic operators, the platform will remain an incomplete promise. We therefore ask each member country to take ownership of this tool, to integrate its inventories, catalogues, certificates of capacity and business opportunities. It is together that we will build its credibility and strength.
I would like to emphasize here a strategic and social purpose that guides our action: to establish, in the long term, a continental bulletin of calls for tenders dedicated to local content. Imagine a mechanism where every African SME or SMI, whether based in Algiers, Brazzaville, Kinshasa, Cairo, Abuja or Dakar, can access the same tenders — and compete on a fair basis — as large international companies. Imagine if contracts were structured to promote local subcontracting, technology transfer and the creation of industrial ecosystems. It is this enterprising and self-reliant Africa that we want to build.
In this regard, the support of Member Countries, ministries, regulators and national societies is essential. APPO is committed to coordinating technical standards and exchange formats, promoting best practices and facilitating the public-private partnerships necessary for the sustainable industrialization of the energy sector.
Your Excellency Mr. Minister, your presence today testifies to the political support that this initiative needs. It sends a strong signal: when countries collectively commit, barriers fall and opportunities multiply for our citizens and businesses.
In conclusion, allow me to appeal to all our Member Countries, our institutions, our companies and our partners: let’s keep this platform alive, enrich it with reliable data, experiences and concrete opportunities, so that it becomes a real tool for the development of local content in Africa.
This step marks the beginning of a new collective dynamic, focused on more added value, skills, jobs and industrial sovereignty for our continent.
In view of this common ambition, I have the honor to invite the Representative of the Minister of Hydrocarbons of the Republic of Congo to officially launch the first pan-African platform of APPO dedicated to local content.
I thank you for your attention and invite you to take part in the demonstration and the discussions that will follow.
Thank you.