Africa’s push to translate vast gas reserves into bankable infrastructure and reliable energy supply gained momentum this week, as ministers, financiers, and industry leaders convened in Abuja to accelerate cross-border gas investments and regional market integration. The Ministerial Roundtable on Cooperation in Advancing Gas Development with Regional Impact Across Africa, co-hosted by Nigeria’s Decade of Gas programme and the World Bank, positioned coordinated execution, rather than resource availability, as the defining constraint on the continent’s energy future.
Held on March 30 and 31, the roundtable brought together senior government officials, national energy companies, and development partners from across the region, including delegations from Senegal, Togo and Benin. The convening reflects a shift from fragmented national gas strategies towards a commercially aligned regional system, anchored on shared infrastructure, harmonised regulation and aggregated demand.
Nigeria’s role as host underscores its position at the centre of this transition. With over 210 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves, the country is advancing its Decade of Gas initiative as both a domestic scale-up programme and a regional coordination platform. The initiative targets gas production of over 12 billion cubic feet per day by 2030, alongside expanded domestic utilisation and industrial application.
Speaking at the roundtable, Ekperikpe Ekpo, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), emphasised the urgency of coordinated execution across the continent. “Africa’s energy future will not be determined by the abundance of our resources, but by our ability to act together,” he said. “The challenge before us is not resource availability, but coordination, infrastructure, and collective action.”
Regional participation reinforced the growing alignment across West Africa’s energy landscape. Robert Koffi Messan Eklo, Minister of Mines and Energy Resources of Togo, underscored the centrality of energy to industrial development and signalled Togo’s commitment to deeper regional cooperation. “There is no industrialisation without energy availability and affordability. Togo is ready to strengthen collaboration with Nigeria under the Decade of Gas initiative and expand its role in regional infrastructure, including the Africa Atlantic Gas Pipeline,” he said.
Discussions centred on converting political alignment into investable opportunities, with a focus on cross-border pipelines, LNG infrastructure, and gas-to-power projects. The World Bank reiterated its role in enabling this transition through a combination of policy advisory, technical support and risk mitigation instruments designed to unlock private capital and improve project bankability.
For West Africa, the implications are immediate. New upstream developments, including Senegal’s emergence as a gas exporter through projects such as Greater Tortue Ahmeyim, alongside active regional participants including Togo and Benin, are reshaping the region’s supply dynamics. The priority now is to connect these assets into an integrated system capable of supporting industrial demand, power generation and intra-African trade.
The Abuja convening also reinforced the evolution of Nigeria’s Decade of Gas into a platform for aligning national ambitions with regional execution. Ed Ubong, Coordinating Director of the programme, outlined implementation priorities and scale targets, noting that gas output is projected to exceed 12 billion cubic feet per day by 2030, alongside a planned expansion in domestic cooking gas consumption. “These targets are ambitious, but they are not being pursued in isolation,” he said, pointing to the growing alignment between governments, financiers and industry players around a shared execution agenda
As the roundtable concluded, the emphasis shifted to delivery. Working groups, project pipelines and financing frameworks are expected to follow, translating high-level alignment into actionable investments. For a continent with over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves and more than 600 million people without access to electricity, the commercial case is clear: scale will depend on integration.
