APPO Seeks $2bn to Fund Critical Infrastructure- Kachikwu

Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and President of African Petroleum Producers Organisation (APPO) Dr. Ibe Kachikwu has said the organisation is seeking to mobilise about $2bn of resources to fund critical areas of infrastructural collaboration within Africa.
Kachikwu stated this in his address at the commencement of the Nigeria Petroleum Summit (NIPS) holding in Abuja.
He spoke on the theme “Africa on the Global Stage: International Collaboration, Opportunities & the Future.”
APPO made up of 18 member oil producing countries, accounts for nearly 95 per cent of Africa’s oil production and at least 13% of world production.
He said a major reform aimed at repositioning the organisation and make it relevant was recently completed.
Part of the reforms identified by the APPO included an increased synergy that would help mobilize the investment needed to facilitate and deliver the major infrastructure required by the continent, such as trans-border gas and oil pipeline, joint refineries, gas plants and others.
Kachikwu said a presentation to the APPO council of ministers at the weekend was made on all the new changes needed to be done in the organisation.
“The whole idea is to mobilise between $1 billion and $2 billion of resources to fund all the essentials necessary for us to properly collaborate.
“Today, most African countries are silos, everybody does their own thing; you build your own refineries, plants, gas turbines etc. If we could just cross the Rubicon and be able to extend hands of infrastructural relationship across Africa; build joint pipeline, plants and refineries; begin to protect the African market, we would have taken a huge step, not only in the development of Africa, but to the stabilisation of independent countries,” he said.
“We have finished that meeting and signed on to resolutions that endorsed all the changes that we have suggested. We are now going to move on the implementation stages,” he said.