On 30 and 31 March 2026, Abuja became the focal point of a defining conversation for Africa’s energy future. Co-hosted by Nigeria’s Decade of Gas programme and the World Bank, the Ministerial Roundtable and Workshop on Cooperation in Advancing Gas Development with Regional Impact Across Africa brought together government ministers, institutional leaders, and industry stakeholders from across the continent, united by a single conviction: that Africa’s gas revolution cannot be won by any one nation alone.
The choice of Abuja as host city was no coincidence. Nigeria, with an estimated 210.54 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, the largest in Africa and ninth globally, has long positioned itself as the natural anchor of a continental gas strategy. The Decade of Gas, Nigeria’s landmark initiative to scale domestic and export gas production to over 12 billion cubic feet per day by 2030, has become more than a national programme: it is emerging as the institutional architecture through which Africa’s broader gas ambitions are taking shape.
Over two days of ministerial-level exchanges and technical workshops, the gathering cut to the heart of one of Africa’s most persistent paradoxes. The continent holds over 600 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, yet more than 600 million people still lack access to electricity, with millions relying on traditional fuels for cooking. The Abuja roundtable was convened precisely to confront that contradiction, band to forge the coordinated response it demands.
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Nigeria Steps Up: A Host with a Mission
The event was hosted by Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), the Honourable Ekperikpe Ekpo, a figure who has rapidly become one of Africa’s most consequential voices on gas diplomacy, following his emergence earlier this year as President of the 2026 Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) Ministerial Meeting.
Addressing ministers, development partners, and stakeholders, Ekpo declared that “Africa’s energy future will not be determined by the abundance of our resources, but by our ability to act together,” adding that the challenge ahead is “not a question of resource availability but rather it is a question of coordination, infrastructure, and collective action.”
His message carried the weight of a nation that has spent decades grappling with the very contradictions now facing the continent at large: abundant reserves, insufficient infrastructure, fragmented markets, and persistent energy poverty. Nigeria’s experience, its failures as much as its hard-won successes, gives it a unique moral and strategic authority to lead this conversation.
Ekpo called for the roundtable to move beyond discussions to deliver concrete outcomes: clearly defined areas of cooperation, identification of priority bankable cross-border projects, and the establishment of institutional mechanisms to drive implementation. He pointed to Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act as a reference model for the kind of regulatory harmonisation the region urgently needs.
West Africa in the Room: Senegal’s Presence Signals a New Regional Dynamic
Among the delegations that made the journey to Abuja, Senegal’s presence carried particular symbolic and strategic weight. The West African nation is in the midst of one of the most consequential energy transitions on the continent: the Sangomar oil field came online in 2024, and the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim LNG project positions Senegal as an emerging gas exporter of regional significance.
Representing Senegal at the highest level were the Minister of Energy, Petroleum and Mines, alongside Alioune Guèye, Chief Executive Officer of Petrosen Holdings, the national hydrocarbons company steering Senegal’s upstream ambitions, and Mamadou Diop, Director General and CEO of the Société Africaine de Raffinage (SAR), the country’s strategic refining entity. Their joint presence at a Nigerian-led ministerial forum speaks volumes about the momentum gathering across West Africa: these are not countries watching from the sidelines. They are actors with assets, ambitions, and a growing appetite for the kind of cross-border frameworks this roundtable was designed to build.
Their participation also underscores a broader trend that the Decade of Gas programme has been instrumental in accelerating, the shift from bilateral energy relationships towards multilateral West African coordination, with Nigeria as the backbone.
The World Bank’s Role: Finance, Policy, and De-Risking the Vision
No regional gas agenda can succeed without credible, scalable financing. The World Bank’s co-hosting of the event was not ceremonial, it was a statement of institutional commitment to translating political will into bankable projects.
Speaking at the roundtable, the World Bank’s Country Director for Nigeria, Mathew Verghis, represented by Justin Beleoken, said the institution’s engagement goes beyond financing to include policy support, technical expertise, and investment facilitation. The International Finance Corporation, he noted, plays a pivotal role in catalysing private sector participation by financing developers and unlocking investment opportunities, while the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency helps de-risk projects and attract capital through guarantees.
This multi-instrument approach is exactly what regional gas infrastructure demands. Cross-border pipelines, LNG terminals, gas-to-power projects, these are not investments that the private sector can absorb alone, nor that governments can finance unilaterally. The World Bank’s presence in Abuja was a signal that the international financial architecture is prepared to engage, provided that African governments deliver the policy coherence and regulatory stability that investors require.
The Decade of Gas: From National Programme to Continental Platform
Perhaps the most significant dimension of the Abuja roundtable was what it revealed about the Decade of Gas itself. Launched as Nigeria’s internal mobilisation strategy to unlock the country’s underutilised gas resources, the programme has evolved into something larger, a convening platform with genuine continental reach.
The Coordinating Director of the Decade of Gas Programme, Ed Ubong, outlined implementation priorities, projecting gas output of over 12 BCF a day by 2030 and an expansion of cooking gas consumption from about 1.5 million tonnes per annum to about 3 million tonnes per annum by 2030. Those targets are ambitious by any measure, but the Abuja event made clear that Nigeria is not pursuing them in isolation.
By co-hosting a ministerial forum that brought in West African delegations, the World Bank, and industry stakeholders, the Decade of Gas demonstrated its capacity to function as a regional convening mechanism, one that can align national programmes, attract multilateral financing, and build the political consensus that large-scale infrastructure projects require before they can move to implementation.
Ekpo stressed the need to “move beyond fragmented national markets towards integrated regional systems, with transparent pricing, demand aggregation, and efficient cross-border trade.” The frameworks being discussed in Abuja, harmonised fiscal regimes, shared regulatory standards, coordinated infrastructure corridors, are the technical preconditions for the integrated African gas market that the continent’s energy security demands.
What Comes Next
The Abuja roundtable will not be the final word. Its value lies in what it sets in motion: working groups, project identification processes, financing frameworks, and, critically, the institutional relationships between ministers and their counterparts that make cross-border deals possible.
For West Africa in particular, the trajectory is clear. The region holds the reserves, the growing domestic demand, and an increasingly sophisticated institutional landscape. What has historically been missing is the coordination infrastructure, the shared architecture of policy, regulation, and financing, that allows individual national endowments to become a regional energy system.
The Decade of Gas, in partnership with the World Bank, is building that architecture. Abuja was not just a meeting. It was a proof of concept.
SOURCE: Gas for Africa