By Jubril Adamu

Africa has become very good at talking about its energy future. Governments consult investors.

Regulators engage operators. Companies meet host communities. Agreements are signed, commitments are made and the same ambitions are repeated: attract capital, develop resources, create jobs, and deliver value. Yet across the continent, the distance between agreeing on what needs to happen and making it happen remains stubbornly wide.

For Kofo Olagunju, General Manager, Security, Government and External Relations, Oando Energy Resources, closing that gap requires a different kind of relationship between the people responsible for developing Africa’s energy resources. Speaking at AOW: Energy in Accra, Ghana, he argued that governments, regulators, operators, investors, and host communities cannot afford to approach energy development as separate interests when the success of one ultimately depends on the others.“Operators and regulators are ultimately working towards the same shared value. It must be a partnership. Regulators need to understand the pain points of operators, just as operators need to understand the broader objectives that regulators and governments are aiming to achieve.”

That sounds obvious until it is tested against the reality of developing an upstream project. A government is concerned with national value and resource stewardship. A regulator must protect those interests while creating a workable environment for investment. An operator is committing capital against geological, commercial, and operational risks.

An investor is deciding whether the returns justify those risks. Communities living alongside the resource have their own expectations of what development should deliver. Those interests will inevitably pull in different directions. The challenge is creating enough alignment for disagreement to be resolved before it becomes an obstacle to development.

Olagunju noted that part of that work begins with how decisions are made. The industry cannot be expected to embrace policies it has had little role in shaping, just as regulators cannot build workable frameworks without understanding the realities of operating within them. His point was that stakeholders should be “part of the cake when it’s being baked”. Participation early in the process creates greater understanding of what is being decided and why.

Good policy, however, can become little more than paperwork if implementation does not follow. “Consult all you want, but the best-laid plans are useless if they are not properly implemented.” For an industry where regulatory decisions can determine whether billions of dollars are committed or withheld, implementation is where confidence is tested. Investors need more than well-written policies. They need institutions that make clearly articulated decisions, apply them consistently, and provide enough certainty for long-term capital to be deployed.

The stakes are therefore larger than any individual project. Africa is competing for capital in a global energy market, yet the continent is attracting a shrinking share of it. The International Energy Agency estimates that energy investment in Africa is one-third lower in 2025 than it was in 2015, even though the continent accounts for around 20 per cent of the world’s population.Resource potential alone cannot reverse that trend. Africa cannot control every factor influencing where investors put their money, but it can influence the quality of the environment it creates for investment. Unambiguous policies, effective institutions, and relationships that allow governments, regulators, and industry to work through opportunities and challenges together all form part of that environment.

For Olagunju, that requires Africans to think with greater ownership about the future they are trying to build. “Based on world events, it is quite obvious that no one is coming to save Africa. The future of Africa really depends on us.” Countries elsewhere are increasingly putting their own economic and strategic interests first. He believes Africa must be equally deliberate and sometimes even selfish about its own. “America first, India first, but I haven’t heard Africa first. And therein lies the problem.”

An Africa-first approach does not mean turning away international capital. It means being deliberate about the conditions under which that capital enters the continent, the resources it helps develop, and the value those resources ultimately create for African economies and communities.

Value also must be visible beyond the balance sheet, particularly in the communities living alongside those resources. A company can have every licence required to develop a resource and still find itself unable to operate effectively. Access can be disrupted. Facilities can become difficult to reach.

Projects can stall. The legal right to operate, in other words, does not automatically create the conditions to operate. “If you think you have all the licences to operate without the freedom to operate, you’re really mistaken.”

Communities that once lived alongside resource operations with little connection to the value being created have increasingly become stakeholders, and in Olagunju’s view, shareholders in the success of those operations. “Host communities have evolved from being neighbours to the resources, to stakeholders in the development process, and increasingly, to shareholders in the success of our operations.”

Consequently, companies must treat community engagement as part of the operation itself, rather than something to address when tensions arise. Trust must exist before the difficult moment arrives. “The communities are your frontline. If you treat them right and build relationships based on transparency, they can become your strongest source of intelligence, helping you identify emerging threats and understand what is happening around your operations. You cannot sustain operations without making host communities an integral part of them. That requires transparency and trust.”

“It is a work in progress, but I think the future is extremely bright,” he said. Turning that optimism into lasting value will depend on whether shared ambition can survive beyond the room where it was expressed. The real measure of progress is what happens when those conversations are over.

Adamu, an energy enthusiast wrote from Lagos.