Eunice Kalu
Lagos — In a bid to relieve the emergency in the African energy area, the African Export-Import Bank, Afreximbank, in partnership The African Petroleum Producers’ Organization, APPO, have revealed plans to set up the African Energy Bank in June 2024.
The bank made this declaration during a session, at the ongoing Inter- African Exchange Fair, IATF, 2023 Trade Conference, in Cairo, Egypt, titled “Africa’s Energy Progress and Financing.”
The African Petroleum Producers Organization, APPO, and Afreximbank consented to an arrangement in 2022, which brought about the drive. To help an energy progress system driven by Africa, the two players are supposed to cooperate to lay out the African Energy Change Bank.
Afreximbank’s Director of Client Relations, Rene Awambeng, expressed that the bank had teamed up with in excess of 700 African banks and its partners to outline a rewarding course for the mainland’s energy industry.
The management of Afreximbank has decided to lay out another association that will deal with supporting the Energy Africa prerequisite notwithstanding what the bank and its accomplices are as of now doing. This organization will work behind the scenes with APPO.
Awambeng said: “We are in the final stage of getting all the approvals and it is going to be an organisation set off by treaties.
“We will have three classes of shareholders; the first will be the African oil-producing countries, national oil companies, and African investors as well as the international investors from all walks of life.”
He noted that the budgeted share per capital would be five million dollars.
“There will be a process to identify these establishment agreements on the charter to engage in fundraising and commence operations by June 2024.
“The AEB will then be able to help African oil-producing member-states to take advantage of the over 125-billion-barrel reserves of oil and that of the over 75 trillion-cubit scuff of gas that we have on the African continent.
“This will not only help in raising the much-needed foreign exchange from trading, exporting of these resources after they are transformed which again will lead to industrialization on the continent,’’ he said.
According to him, the bank would be able to improve developed oil assets and develop infrastructure, which was more needed in terms of refineries, logistics, pipelines, and building of storage facilities.
Awambeng noted that the challenges faced in the energy sector were not new, adding that a lot of the international banks had moved away from financing projects in the sector. According to him, the firepower is not there to meet the 80 trillion-dollar requirement from the industry.
“You see sectors like fintech are attracting more money than investment in oil and gas or energy which is critical to the industrialisation of the continent,” he said.
