The African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) (formerly called the African Petroleum Producers’ Association, APPA) was established on January 27, 1987 in Lagos, Federal Republic of Nigeria, to serve as a platform for cooperation and harmonization of efforts, collaboration, sharing of knowledge and expertise among African oil producing countries.
Its founding members conceived it as a means of alleviating the difficulties of non-oil producing African countries who were faced with balance of payment challenges and therefore could not import refined oil products.
The idea of the creation of APPA came about in the 1980s through informal meetings among the African Member Countries of OPEC (Algeria, Gabon, Libya and Nigeria). This was in response to the spiral rise in international oil prices from the 1970s, a situation which seriously affected the balance of payments of many developing countries.
In response to that development, OPEC had in 1976 established the OPEC Fund for International Development, whose mandate was to assist non-OPEC developing countries with balance of payment challenges to secure oil supplies for the effective operations of their economies.
The African Member Countries of OPEC noted that African countries are most hard hit by the rise in oil prices but that the OPEC Fund cannot solve the problems of all the affected countries. It was this realization by the above listed four countries that spurred them into action. Thus, the four countries agreed to provide oil to African countries with balance of payments difficulties which resulted in their inability to import oil. They agreed to reserve 4% of their production to meet these needs.
The first meeting of this group of four countries took place in Libreville, Gabon, in October 1984. Thereafter consultations were made with other oil producing Non-OPEC African states to bring them into the fold. And in June 1985 in Brioni, (former Yugoslavia) another meeting was held. It was in Brioni that the leaders formally decided to found the Association.
Following that important decision, Libreville hosted the first formal meeting of representatives of the founding Countries to draft the Association’s Statute. That meeting took place on 21st and 22nd April 1986.
In January 1987, eight (08) oil producing African countries (Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria, called the founding Members) met in Lagos to formally found the African Petroleum Producers’ Association (APPA).
Today, the number of APPO members has increased from eight (8) in 1987 to eighteen (18) (Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Tchad, Congo, DR Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa).
Between 2014 and 2019, the Association underwent a major reform necessitating a critical review of its mission and vision, organizational structure and even a change of name from the African Petroleum Producers’ Association (APPA) to the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO). The reform was in response to the fast pace of changes on the global energy scene. It was noted that more and more African countries were finding oil, yet the dependence of Africa on external oil-technology as well as markets and investment finance was on the increase.
It was further noted that African oil producing countries have not done critical studies on how a successful energy transtion, in line with the COP-21 Agreement, could affect their economic, political and social lives. Unlike most other regions of the world with oil, the African oil producing countries are the most heavily dependant on oil revenues. Realizing that the global paraduigm shift in energy sources away from hydrocarbons to renewables will soon begin to impact on foreign direct investment in oil and gas projects, at a time African countries are still heavily dependant on oil and gas revenue, the reformed Organization has created a finance arm, the Africa Energy Investment Corporation, AEICorp, to facilitate the raising of capital for investments in the oil and gas sector in Africa.
