At the Local Content Plenary Session co-hosted by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and the Ghana Petroleum Commission during AOW Energy Week in Accra, industry leaders tackled one of Africa’s most pressing questions: how to translate conversations on oil and gas collaboration into tangible, cross-border projects.
Moderated by Paul Morton of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, the session drew insights from technical, policy, and commercial leaders, including Emeka Okwuosa, the group CEO of Oilserv, represented by Chuka Eze, managing director of Frazimex Engineering Limited.
The session, themed “Cross-border Projects and Knowledge Exchange,” underscored the urgency of cooperation across the continent’s energy landscape.
Taking the floor, Eze delivered a spirited call for action, describing Africa’s natural resource endowment as vast but underutilised.
He outlined three strategic pathways, continental synergy, accurate data, and relaxed mobility frameworks, that could transform Africa from a fragmented market into a unified energy powerhouse.
At the heart of his address was the call for continental synergy. For Africa to maximise the value of its natural resources, Eze argued, its nations must pool expertise, share infrastructure, and embrace collective ambition.
He stressed that countries need not “reinvent the wheel” when proven technical solutions and indigenous expertise already exist across the continent.
For Eze, cooperation along the oil and gas value chain, beginning with upstream development, is essential to achieve shared prosperity. His vision painted a continent able to rely on itself, leveraging indigenous knowledge to extract resources more efficiently and sustainably.
Complementing this was the emphasis on accurate and accessible data. Investment confidence and smart policy decisions, Eze explained, hinge on reliable information.
He pointed to the NCDMB’s initiatives—such as the Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunity Fair (NOGOF) and the Service Providers Qualification System—as examples of how transparent platforms can bridge information gaps, enabling indigenous firms to anticipate projects and position for partnerships. In his words, such registries and databases serve as the “infrastructure of trust,” reducing asymmetries that often exclude local firms while giving operators confidence in indigenous capacity.
The Oilserv Group’s journey itself illustrates the transformative power of indigenous participation. From its modest beginnings, including small-scale refurbishment projects, Oilserv has evolved into a trusted Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractor with operations spanning Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Togo, and Uganda. Its projects deliver not only infrastructure but also critical spillover benefits—local jobs, skills transfer, supply chain growth, and structured training programs for young engineers.
Each milestone aligns with the NCDMB’s mandate of transforming local content into genuine competence and commercial opportunity.
Frazimex Engineering, a member of the group, complements this effort through rigorous design and project definition, ensuring large-scale projects are both buildable and bankable. Engr. Chuka cited the Obiafu–Obrikom–Oben (OB3) Gas Infrastructure project and the Ajaokuta–Kaduna–Kano (AKK) Pipeline as case studies.
For OB3, Frazimex delivered the engineering design for a 48-inch, 128-kilometer pipeline and a 2 bscf/day gas treatment plant, with Oilserv managing procurement and construction. For the AKK Pipeline, Oilserv demonstrated the capacity to execute across difficult terrains, underscoring Africa’s technical ability to deliver world-scale energy infrastructure without reliance on external contractors. These projects, he said, represent a replicable model for cross-border ventures.
Perhaps the most practical and immediate policy recommendation from the plenary was the call for relaxed visa restrictions.
According to Eze, rigid mobility rules remain a major barrier to knowledge exchange, skills transfer, and project delivery. He urged African governments to create business-friendly policies and “mobility frameworks” to accelerate collaboration. “We do have the resources and skills,” he remarked, “but we must move into implementation mode. By the next forum, the measure of progress should be the outcomes of these conversations, not the repetition of them.”
The plenary’s central message was clear: Africa has the resources, the expertise, and the institutional framework to define its own energy future. What is required now is continental alignment—transparent project pipelines, accessible data, deliberate skills development, predictable standards, and enabling policies that allow talent and technology to move freely.
For Oilserv Group, the mission goes beyond building pipelines. As Okwuosa’s representatives made clear, the company sees itself as connecting nations, unlocking prosperity, and shaping Africa’s energy destiny. If synergy, accuracy, and mobility are embraced at scale, Africa could soon move from dialogue to delivery, positioning itself as a global energy leader powered by its own ingenuity and cooperation.
