Uche Cecil Izuora
Energy analyst has said that Africa’s energy transition and industrial development push specifically depends less on resource availability than on whether governments and investors can build the infrastructure to move power, refine fuels and process minerals.
This is according to Ibra Niae Diaye, partner and lead for oil and gas at Forvis Mazars in Senegal, who spoke during African Energy Week in Cape Town.
Speaking to CNBC Africa on the sidelines of the conference, Diaye said the event had brought together international oil companies, national oil companies, policymakers and other industry leaders at a time when more than 600 million people on the continent still lack access to electricity.
He said that reality has sharpened debate around how Africa should balance fossil fuels and renewables while pursuing industrial development and broader economic growth.
“The biggest opportunity is infrastructure,” Diaye told CNBC Africa. “Africa holds huge potential of resources, but resources bring potential and infrastructure create economic value.”
That argument goes to the heart of a long-running challenge for the continent’s energy sector. Africa is rich in hydrocarbons, renewable resources and critical minerals, but the existence of those assets alone has not translated into dependable electricity access, large-scale industrialization or lower energy costs for households and businesses.
Diaye said the priority now is to create integrated systems that connect energy resources to populations and industrial users. In practice, that means building out transport, refining, generation, storage and transmission assets that can support domestic consumption as well as regional trade.
He pointed to the Dangote refinery in Nigeria as one of the clearest examples of how infrastructure can reshape value creation in Africa’s energy economy.
According to Diaye, the refinery is a “game changer” not only for Nigeria but also for West and Central Africa, illustrating how private capital can be deployed at scale to reduce structural gaps in the downstream sector.
“So without Dangote, let me give you one example, Africa refinery will be decreasing,” he said, arguing that the project had changed the trajectory for refining capacity in the region after other facilities faced closures, including in Morocco.
He added that the refinery demonstrates how local processing infrastructure can generate value inside Africa rather than leaving countries dependent on exports of raw materials and imports of refined products. Diaye also cited the proposed Lamu refinery in Kenya as another project that could help fill infrastructure gaps in East Africa.
The comments come as governments across the continent try to position energy not just as a supply issue, but as a foundation for industrial policy, trade expansion and job creation.
Diaye said one obstacle to faster project development is the persistent view among some foreign investors that Africa is an unusually risky place to deploy capital. That narrative, he argued, often obscures the scale of the opportunity and the need for investment models better adapted to local market conditions.
“There is a lot of issues in terms of narrative because people used to consider that Africa is a risky environment, but when you come in Africa and invest, you can see that this is not the case,” he said.
He said financing remains another major constraint, particularly for fossil fuel-related projects at a time when parts of the global financial system have become more cautious about hydrocarbons. In his view, that approach can fail to account for Africa’s development needs and the fact that many economies on the continent are still trying to expand basic access to energy.
Diaye said Africa’s energy strategy should not be framed as a choice between fossil fuels and renewables, but as a balancing exercise shaped by local realities. For many countries, he said, that means using both in ways that support reliable power supply, industrial demand and long-term growth.
The interview also turned to critical minerals, which Diaye described as central to the next phase of Africa’s energy development. He said the continent has significant mineral resources that can underpin battery storage and broader electricity system resilience, especially as grids expand and more renewable power comes online.
“We need grids. We need infrastructure that will distribute all those electricity, but above distribution we need to store, and to store you need batteries,” Diaye said.
He argued that Africa should move beyond exporting raw critical minerals and instead develop refining and processing capacity at home. That, he said, would allow countries to capture more value from mineral production while also supporting local manufacturing ecosystems tied to storage technologies and power systems.
The broader economic case, he added, goes beyond energy access alone. Developing refineries, mineral processing facilities, storage systems and associated technologies would help create businesses, deepen industrial capacity and open up jobs for a fast-growing young population.
Diaye said the sector could also become a platform for developing technical skills and homegrown expertise. In his view, energy projects should be seen not only as infrastructure investments, but also as vehicles for creating new African capabilities in technology and industrial operations.
A major part of that effort, he said, will require much deeper regional integration.
Diaye argued that many African countries do not have the scale to build every major energy asset on a standalone basis. Instead, he said, regions should coordinate on grids, pipelines, refining systems and cross-border infrastructure so that supply can be shared more efficiently and energy can become more affordable.
“We need regional collaboration. We need regional integration,” he said. “We need to integrate grids. We need to integrate pipelines that will bring those economic value and also the affordable energy we are discussing.”
He also called for more alignment in regulation, saying regional energy integration will be difficult without common rules in areas such as local content and project frameworks. Africa already has regional economic blocs, he said, but those arrangements need to go further if countries want to build practical cross-border energy systems.
The focus on implementation is likely to be one of the main tests after African Energy Week concludes.
Diaye said the conference is valuable because it brings together the stakeholders needed to discuss solutions across the full energy value chain, from fossil fuels to renewables and storage. But he said the bigger challenge will come after delegates return home and try to convert discussion into projects.
“What we need once we go back to our home is to be more pragmatic on the way we implement all the discussion we had during African Energy Week,” he said.
For African policymakers, investors and energy companies, that means moving more quickly on infrastructure, local processing and regional coordination if the continent is to translate resource wealth into affordable power, industrial development and economic growth.