Dangote Refinery presents Africa with new opportunities – NCDMB boss

Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, has said the Dangote 650,000-barrel-per-day Integrated Refinery and Petrochemical Company affords Nigeria and other African countries partnership opportunities for sourcing petroleum products and fertiliser.

The Executive Secretary of the NCDMB, Felix Omatsola Ogbe, said this at the 9th Sub-Saharan African International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (SAIPEC) in Lagos.

In his address, Ogbe said similar projects capable of leveraging collaborations included Kenya’s Konza Technology City, Grand Ethiopian Dam, Lekki Free Trade Zone (Lagos), and facilities like the SHI-MCI FPSO Fabrication/Integration Yard in Lagos.

He also said the NCDMB’s Nigerian Oil and Gas Parks Scheme, NOGAPS, being developed in seven locations in Nigeria, has invited interested businessmen and investors seeking to manufacture industry-related equipment, components, and spares to apply.

He disclosed the importance of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA, as a critical legal framework that could be leveraged to achieve collaborative local content strategy in Africa, given the free trade area it has created by integrating 1.3 billion people across 54 African countries with a combined gross domestic product of over $3 trillion.

Ogbe, therefore, charged sub-Saharan African nations to keep pace with unfolding trends in the global oil and gas industry and adopt a unified approach in strengthening local content development, advancing industrialisation, and fostering sustainable continent-wide economic growth.

According to him, nations like Nigeria, Angola, and Ghana had made notable strides in local content development by boosting indigenous participation in the oil and gas sector, but expressed the regret that “fragmented implementation continued to hinder collective progress.”

He called for a collaborative strategy among petroleum-producing nations in sub-Saharan Africa that would foster the sharing of best practices and enhance cross-border partnerships that could drive the competitiveness of indigenous players.

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