Regina Otokpa and Pauline Onyibe …spends $120m on hydrocarbon alone
Secretary General of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organisation (APPO), Farid Ghazali, has revealed that Africa is losing at least $15 billion every year by exporting crude oil and natural gas that should be processed locally.
This was as the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, disclosed that Africa currently spent over $120 billion annually on hydrocarbons alone, a staggering outflow of capital.
Speaking at the ongoing Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES) 2026, Lokpobiri noted that “this level of expenditure, primarily on the importation of refined petroleum products and other hydrocarbon-related services, represents not just a financial cost, but a lost opportunity for economic transformation.
“The core idea is this: if Africa can retain a proportion of that spending within the continent through localized value addition, infrastructure development, and industrial participation, the economic impact would be transformative. “That is why we should support the African Energy Bank (AEB) with its headquarters in Nigeria.
If we do not mobilize the appropriate resources to solve our energy problems in Africa our misery will increase as our population grows, the responsibility is ours and ours alone.”
According to him, retaining “hydrocarbon value in Africa means creating the fiscal space and investment capacity needed to power critical sectors such as healthcare, education, infrastructure, security and technology.” In his address, Ghazali said the continent battles chronic poverty, energy shortages and weak industrialisation despite abundant resources.
Africa still exports about 70 per cent of its crude oil and 45 per cent of its natural gas, describing the situation as a “paradoxical and frustrating reality” driven largely by high financing costs, weak regional integration and poor access to capital.
Joining other African energy leaders renewed calls for a radical shift from export-led resource extraction to domestic value addition and energy sovereignty, he explained that over 150 critical energy projects, including refineries, gas infrastructure and pipelines such as the Ajaokuta–Kaduna–Kano (AKK) pipeline, remain stalled across the continent because of prohibitive financing costs.
