Farid Ghezali, Secretary General of the African Petroleum Producers Organization (APPO), will take the stage at African Energy Week (AEW) 2026, taking place October 12–16 in Cape Town. Ghezali leads the pan-African body that, alongside the African Export-Import Bank (Afrexibank), is spearheading the African Energy Bank (AEB) – a landmark institution expected to become operational by June 2026 in Abuja, Nigeria. His confirmation at AEW places Africa’s evolving financing architecture at the center of the event’s agenda.
Founded in Lagos in 1987, APPO has grown from eight founding member states to 18, representing the full breadth of Africa’s oil-producing nations from Algeria and Nigeria in the north and west to Namibia and South Africa in the south. Headquartered in Brazzaville, Congo, the organization underwent a major reform in 2019, broadening its mandate beyond market coordination to actively facilitate investment and financing across the continent. The AEB is the most significant product of that expanded mandate to date.
The bank is designed to fill the financing vacuum created by the withdrawal of Western institutions from African oil and gas projects. With over 150 essential projects stalled across the continent due to capital shortfalls, the AEB’s mandate covers the full value chain, from upstream exploration and midstream infrastructure through to downstream distribution. Established with an initial capitalization of $5 billion, the bank is targeting $10 billion in Phase 1 deployments, with a longer-term goal of raising $15 billion for oil and gas projects by 2030. Nigeria handed over the bank’s Abuja headquarters to APPO and Afrexibank in February 2026, signaling a crucial step toward its operational start.
Beyond direct project finance, Ghezali has stressed the AEB’s potential to transform how African National Oil Companies (NOC) access capital. APPO’s 18 NOCs have historically operated without a common financial platform, limiting their collective ability to attract large-scale investment. The bank is expected to support NOC listings, connecting sovereign producers to capital markets and sovereign wealth funds at scale, while also aiming to unify intra-African oil and gas pricing to deliver up to 30% in savings on energy imports across member states.
“The AEB represents more than a new financing institution. It is a statement that Africa intends to control the terms of its own energy development,” said NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber. “APPO has spent years building the institutional groundwork and member-state alignment to make this credible.”
AEW 2026 – Africa’s largest energy gathering – will bring together policymakers, project developers, financiers and operators to assess how the AEB’s arrival reshapes the continent’s energy financing landscape. Ghezali’s address is set to be among the event’s most consequential sessions as Africa’s oil and gas sector navigates a decisive shift in how its projects are funded.
Africa Fact: Lalibela is not the only place in Ethiopia to have such wonders. A cotemporary archaeologist reports research that was conducted in the region in the early 1970’s when: “startling numbers of churches built in caves or partially or completely cut from the living rock were revealed not only in Tigre and Lalibela but as far south as Addis Ababa. Soon at least 1,500 were known. At least as many more probably await revelation.”
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