Excellencies, colleagues, and friends, welcome to African Energy Week.

I have the absolute best job in the world. Every day, I get to serve as the voice for the operators, the engineers, the roughnecks, and the visionaries who are quite literally building the future of this continent from the ground up.

And let’s be honest right out of the gate: we are meeting at a historic crossroads. Look around the world today. While distant capitals are trapped in the quicksand of policy volatility, ideological experiments, and economic sclerosis, Africa is stepping up to the global stage. We cannot lose sight of what is happening globally. We must seize this moment and move with absolute speed!

For years, global elites have flown into Africa to tell us how to manage our backyard. They come with beautiful slide decks, lofty slogans, and empty promises. They tell us that we need to keep our resources in the ground. They preach a gospel of transition that looks a lot like economic austerity.

Well, let me give you a reality check from the African Energy Chamber: Energy poverty is not a climate strategy, and deprivation is not development!

Let’s not get complacent. The climate crowd is not dead. They are still around, lurking in the wings. Greta Thunberg might be out on maternity leave right now, but make no mistake—she is coming back, and the radical anti-fossil fuel machinery is warming up its engines.

We cannot afford to wait for them. While mature economies are trying to figure out how to build less, explore less, Drill Less, produce less, consume less, and pay more for energy,   our mission is beautifully simple: We are in the business of energy addition! We have 1.4 billion people to power today, and millions more arriving tomorrow. We need grids. We need pipelines. We need factories. We need light. And we are going to build it all using an unapologetic, realistic, "All-of the Above Energies" approach.

The global markets are finally waking up to what we’ve known all along. Look at the disruptions shaking the world—from the Strait of Hormuz to the supply chains of Europe. The world has learned the hard way that energy security isn’t built on climate Twitter or regulatory red tape. Energy security is built on logistics, leverage, and raw execution.

And right now, Africa is delivering the goods. This year, our continent's hydrocarbon production is hitting a massive 11 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. By 2030, that number will climb to 12.5 million.

Our traditional powerhouses—Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Libya, and Egypt—are driving the baseline. Nigeria is aggressively reforming its deepwater terms to hit its targets. Angola is proving that smart fiscal incentives can make mature fields roar back to life.

But let’s talk about our hosts. South Africa needs to get its regulatory environment in order. It is no longer funny. You cannot continue to blame climate activists for the lawfare. It is time to step up. Pass the laws, clear the hurdles, and completely open up the high-potential Orange Basin! Our neighbors to the north in Namibia are showing us exactly what happens when you move from discovery toward development planning with focus. South Africa’s portion has been substantially de-risked by these multi-billion-barrel northern discoveries. It is time to stop formatting committees and start drilling.

Because when it comes to capital, we are rewriting the financial architecture of this continent. The Africa Energy Bank is progressing beautifully, and we owe a massive debt of gratitude to the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) and Afreximbank. We are absolutely thrilled that it is being launched soon.

Why do we need it? Because we need to unlock the rank hypocrisy around global financing. Let’s call it what it is: gas is branded "green" and sustainable for the rich in Europe when they need to keep their factories warm, but it is labeled "bad" and toxic for the poor in Africa when we try to light up our homes. That double standard ends now. Our own institutions are stepping up, and the rest of the commercial banks on this continent need to step up too. Capital access is the ultimate transaction filter, and we must fund our own destiny.

Look at how true African execution changes the game. The Dangote refinery has quite literally saved Africa from crushing product shortages, and it is saving Europe and others right now with premium jet fuel exports. It proved that we can refine our own crude, secure our own supply-side affordability, and flip the script from dependency to absolute dominance.

That is the energy abundance mindset we need to take into our frontier basins. Frontier basins like Sierra Leone, Liberia, and The Gambia are seeing massive new agreements signed with the international oil companies, bringing majors like Eni and Shell back to the table under flexible pre-exploration terms. We want more of that exploration!

But as we chase the new frontiers, we cannot forget where we came from. We need to be aggressively incentivising the next stage of exploration across our mature basins as well. We need near-field exploration, brownfield optimization, and aggressive contract updates in established provinces to keep production flat and offset natural declines. Exploration is the absolute key to our survival. At the end of the day, "Drill, Baby, Drill" is the only realistic way forward for a continent trying to eradicate energy poverty!

And as we talk about global energy abundance and defiance against unfair global restrictions, we must look beyond our shores to our true brothers in the Global South. We must stand in absolute, unwavering support of Venezuela! They possess some of the largest oil reserves on the planet, and they have fought tooth and nail against the same economic strangulation and hypocritical external barriers that we face every day. We must support Venezuela, and we must actively invest there. Our futures are bound together.

The exact same thing goes for Grenada! They are here in the room with us today. They have flown across the ocean, they are sitting at the table, and they want to engage. When a country like Grenada steps up to unlock its offshore potential and build strategic partnerships, Africa must respond with open arms. Let’s back them up, let’s invest in their vision, and let’s show the world what Global South solidarity actually looks like!

As we talk about this shared growth, let us address the elephant in the room. We cannot preach pan-African and global unity in these air-conditioned halls while allowing division to take root in our streets.

When foreign nationals and fellow Africans face hostility, it is a stain on our collective conscience. We at the Chamber stand here today to firmly and unequivocally denounce xenophobia in all its ugly forms. There is no middle ground. We stand directly with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who declared, “We've taken a firm stand against hatred for people from other countries, xenophobia or Afrophobia.” He reminded us all that “there is no space for intolerance in South Africa.”

Let us take those words to heart. The energy industry is, by its very nature, a unifying force. Pipelines don’t care about borders. Power grids don’t stop at passport control. Our industry runs on a shared, global village of engineers, operators, and financiers working shoulder-to-shoulder.

And in that exact same vein, we must address a dangerous trend creeping across our borders: We must actively guard against resource nationalism.

Yes, Africa must maximize its domestic benefits. Yes, local content is vital. But when governments shift the goalposts overnight, impose retroactive compliance burdens, or push state equity demands to a point that chokes out international capital, everybody loses. We saw it with new local content updates and petroleum laws in emerging jurisdictions that have spiked the investment risk premium. Isolation is economic suicide. The moment we fall into the trap of resource isolationism is the moment our assets get stranded in the ground. We need global partnerships, bankable terms, and fiscal predictability to survive.

To pull this off, African governments must step up. Government officials should not pride themselves on how many deals or projects they delay. They should be proud of results and what they approved! We need to cut the red tape. We need to honor contract sanctity. We cannot let heavy-handed bureaucracy kill projects before a single shovel hits the ground. We must be a nation of builders, not bureaucrats.

My friends, we are no longer asking for permission to develop our resources.

We are an optimistic, bold, and brave continent. We have the resources, we have the youth, and we have the momentum. The race is on, and Africa is running to win.

Let’s seize this moment. Let’s stand unapologetically for our right to prosperity. Let’s build the infrastructure, de-risk the capital, and unleash the true, unyielding power of African energy!

Thank you, and God bless Africa.