Stakeholders Advocate Infrastructure Investment To Boost Africa’s Gas Sector
By Sunday Etuka, Abuja
Key players in Africa’s petroleum and gas industry comprising of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organisation (APPO), Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG), Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PTDF) and other stakeholders, have called for urgent investment in critical pipeline infrastructure to maximize the profit of Africa’s Gas Sector.
Secretary General of APPO, Omar Farouk stated this at the 2025 Africa Gas Innovation Summit (AGIS), held in Abuja on Wednesday.
Farouk issued a stark warning on the continent’s energy trajectory, highlighting that despite Africa’s immense gas reserves estimated at over 600 trillion cubic feet, poor infrastructure continues to leave much of this resource stranded.
He therefore, called for a continental paradigm shift from dependency on global structures to self-sufficiency and regional integration. He said Africa’s limited pipeline infrastructure particularly in sub-Saharan Africa continues to render vast natural gas reserves inaccessible and underutilized.
“Nigeria has just about 7,000km of gas pipelines compared to France’s 37,000km, despite having a population nearly four times larger,” Farouk pointed out. “The whole continent has a little over 30,000km of operational pipelines, with Algeria alone accounting for 13,000km. Europe, in contrast, operates over 227,000km,” he said.
He stressed that infrastructure bottlenecks have become a “severe constraint” and urged African nations to stop relying on outsiders for financing, technology, and market access.
He further disclosed that APPO was working with partners like Afreximbank to launch the Africa Energy Bank headquartered in Abuja to address the financing gap and build energy infrastructure including pipeline networks across Central Africa.
On his part, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NLNG, Philip Mshelbila informed that the infrastructure challenge was a major constraint in unlocking the country’s gas potential.
“Gas remains stranded without pipelines, and industries will continue to be underutilised. Infrastructure be it pipelines, metering systems, or processing plants is not just a technical requirement, but an economic lifeline,” he said.
Mshelbila explained that while NLNG had made strides with over 5,000km of pipelines and a growing domestic gas supply programme, scalable and decentralised infrastructure investments remain essential to drive domestic utilisation and industrial corridors.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas) Ekperikpe Ekpo called for stronger regional collaboration through shared infrastructure projects such as the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline and the Trans-Saharan venture, noting that “these are not just pipelines; they are economic lifelines.”
The Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Ahmed Aminu, reiterated the agency’s commitment to building a skilled workforce and encouraging indigenous innovation through strategic capacity development.
“Our sponsorship of AGIS 2025 underscores PTDF’s drive to develop home-grown solutions and resilient institutions. Collaboration between government, academia, and industry is essential to unlocking Africa’s gas potential,” he said.
