The African Energy Week: Invest in African Energies 2024 conference – the official meeting place for Africa’s energy sector – has launched its official program, an impressive five-day agenda featuring 7 premium stages, 5 content stages, 2 technical hubs and a full day of pre-event workshops.

Ahead of the official conference opening, a Farmout Finance Forum will serve as a deal-making pitching platform for NOCs, small- to medium-sized independents and energy sector start-ups, which are involved in exploration activities or seeking funding for projects. Participating companies will provide 10-minute pitches to a captive audience of exploration and new venture managers seeking investment and partnership opportunities across Africa. The pre-event agenda will also include a series of Interactive Technical Workshops – led by pan-African legal and business advisory firm CLG, engineering firm ENERGIO, the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization and market intelligence firm S&P Global – aimed at sharing technical knowledge and enabling the exchange of ideas.

Uniting African countries and the OPEC+ alliance, an OPEC-African Roundtable will highlight the importance of the continent to the global oil producers’ group, following recent commercial hydrocarbon discoveries and new refining capacity brought online. As Africa plays a critical role in driving crude oil supply and demand, this historic session brings together OPEC and non-OPEC African explorers and producers to discuss Africa’s energy development needs, current market conditions and future expectations.

AEW: Invest in African Energy is the platform of choice for project operators, financiers, technology providers and government, and has emerged as the official place to sign deals in African energy. Visit www.aecweek.com for more information about this exciting event.

The Energy Finance Summit will explore the future of financing upstream oil and gas in the age of the energy transition, including a focus on African downstream projects. Discussions will unfold on which policies and market reforms can strengthen long-term viability for financing renewables, new energy and infrastructure development, including low interest rates and ESG lending criteria. A spotlight on Africa’s latest mergers and acquisitions will highlight opportunities for growth, diversification and strategic expansion, as IOCs rebalance their portfolios.

With Africa’s oil and gas blocks continuing to draw global investors, Licensing Rounds from Africa’s leading upstream players – including Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Angola, Algeria, Gabon, Uganda, Egypt and Libya – will be on display at AEW 2024. Investors will be able to access exclusive information and technical presentations from the relevant petroleum ministries and regulators on both current and planned oil and gas licensing rounds, as the continent seeks to attract a broader range of companies to sign new contracts and drive exploratory drilling. 

The Upstream E&P Forum will examine the industry’s latest trends and developments, from IOCs prioritizing deepwater acreages to African NOCs and independents acquiring shallow and onshore operations, and from long-term crude oil outlooks to Africa’s latest oil and gas exploration hotspots. Supply and demand economics for African LNG/FLNG will take center stage, along with strategies for reducing the carbon intensity of upstream assets, including CCUS, methane reduction and flaring minimization technologies. EOR techniques and optimization strategies will also be unpacked – specifically in the context of maximizing revenues from Africa’s mature and legacy assets – as well as enhancing local capacity in oil and gas procurement, fabrication and manufacturing.

As part of the flagship AEW Town Hall, a Intra-African Local Content session will focus on ensuring sustainable economic growth and job creation as part of oil and gas sector activities. The session invites African and global energy and industry leaders to examine policies, incentives and frameworks required to enhance the competitiveness of the African workforce and maximize the socioeconomic benefits of oil and gas operations. It will draw on best practices from established markets like Nigeria, Angola and Ghana, which include embedding local content and localization policies into broader national development plans. 

With a focus on unleashing Africa’s hydrogen revolution and creating a sustainable African hydrogen value chain, the Hydrogen Summit at AEW 2024 will explore the potential of hydrogen as a clean, sustainable energy source and its implications for the African and European energy landscape. Discussions will tackle scalability and cost-effectiveness of green hydrogen projects currently underway and their role as potential catalysts for economic growth, power generation, the development of hydrogen fuel cell technologies and enabling infrastructure and policies.

The interactive exhibition and networking event will feature exclusive investment spotlights on MSGBC member countries, the Republic of Congo, Namibia, Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, South Africa, Ivory Coast and Ghana. A dedicated Saudi-Africa Partnerships Roundtable will unpack Saudi Arabia’s plans to position itself as a long-term partner to Africa’s energy sector growth, while a US-Africa Energy Partnerships Roundtable will explore how the two actors can further collaborate on technology, policy and investment.

The Powering Africa Summit aims to advance clean energy, technology and innovation to pave the way for Africa’s industrial growth and power generation. The session will showcase the value of regional power markets and interconnecting neighboring power systems in pooling energy resources and de-risking investment, as well as strategies for optimizing African grid capacity by eliminating operational bottlenecks and maximizing effective pricing, tariffs and cost recovery mechanisms.

Given the male-dominated profile of the African and global energy industry, a critical panel discussion will take place on the Transformative Impact of Women in Energy, targeting enhanced diversity, equity and inclusion. The session will highlight African women who are breaking the glass ceiling and making diverse contributions to leadership, policy, finance, technology and innovation across the energy value chain. The conference places a strong emphasis on supporting Women and Youth in STEM, empowering underrepresented groups to enter and succeed within technical disciplines, with a view to advancing Africa’s energy industry and the sustainable exploration of the continent’s natural resources.

The Energy Transition Summit will target real-world, scalable solutions for achieving an equitable and inclusive African energy transition, from improving access to financing for small-scale LNG, to accelerating the African coal transition, to leveraging carbon credits and climate finance. Natural gas will play a key role in decarbonizing Africa’s energy markets as a transition fuel, while the rapid expansion of LPG distribution networks remains central to improving access to clean cooking.

“We are pleased to announce our largest and most ambitious program yet for African Energy Week: Invest in African Energies, which speaks to the scope and complexity of Africa’s current energy needs. AEW 2024 represents an integrated, dynamic agenda featuring high-level forums, our flagship town hall discussions and technical workshops, enabling the flow of capital, technology and innovation to meet Africa’s energy security and industrialization goals,” states NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber.