African nations seeking to achieve economic prosperity must develop local capabilities to process, utilise, and export their resources as a means of powering their growth and development, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Simbi Kesiye Wabote said on Tuesday.
The NCDMB Executive Secretary, who is an engineer, made the submission in his presentation at the ongoing 2023 Africa Energy Week in Cape Town, South Africa. He regretted that most African nations lacked requisite local capacities in key areas of the oil and industry such as engineering, procurement, construction and fabrication, installation, commissioning, and operation. He stressed that the situation has resulted in the loss of job creation opportunities, revenues, skills acquisition, and other aspects of national development.
A further negative impact is that those broad categories take a significant proportion of the oil and gas industry expenditure, hence it…