There are moments when institutions reveal what they really stand for—not when circumstances are easy, but when staying the course becomes difficult.

African Energy Week may be approaching one of those moments.

With AEW 2026 scheduled for Cape Town from October 12 to 16 against a backdrop of concerns over the treatment of African migrants in South Africa and tensions in relations between Nigeria and South Africa, suggestions have emerged that the organisers should consider an easier option: temporarily move the conference elsewhere.

London has been mentioned. Houston has been mentioned. Dubai has been mentioned.
The argument is not difficult to understand. Move the event, allow tensions to subside and return when the atmosphere improves.
But for African Energy Week, relocation carries a complication that goes beyond logistics.

AEW was born from an argument about precisely this question: when circumstances become difficult, should one of Africa’s major energy conversations leave Africa?

Five years after the inaugural conference, that principle is being tested again.
And the organisers’ answer remains essentially the same.
Stay.
Talk.
Deal with the problem.
And keep Africa’s energy conversation on African soil.

The Crisis That Gave Birth to AEW
To understand the significance of the decision, it is necessary to return to 2020 and the extraordinary disruption caused by COVID-19.
Africa Oil Week had long been one of the continent’s major petroleum gatherings, traditionally bringing ministers, international oil companies, national oil companies, investors and industry executives to Cape Town.

The pandemic shattered that rhythm.
Its 2020 gathering was disrupted and plans for an early 2021 return were subsequently cancelled as COVID infections, international travel restrictions and limits on public gatherings created enormous uncertainty.
Then came the decision that would inadvertently help reshape Africa’s energy conference landscape.

Africa Oil Week announced that its November 2021 edition would move from Cape Town to Dubai.
There was a practical case for doing so.
The organisers said delegate safety was their overriding concern. South Africa was operating under severe COVID restrictions, large events had been affected and the Cape Town International Convention Centre was being used as a mass vaccination facility. Dubai, meanwhile, had reopened large international events relatively quickly.

AOW described the move as temporary and said it intended to return to Cape Town.
The African Energy Chamber saw the matter differently.
Its argument went beyond whether Dubai was capable of staging a successful conference. Of course it was.

The question was more fundamental.
If an event existed to discuss African oil, African gas, African investment and Africa’s economic future, should the conversation itself leave Africa precisely when the continent was experiencing one of its greatest economic crises?

The Chamber’s answer was no.
In June 2021, it formally launched African Energy Week, committing to hold the inaugural gathering in Cape Town that November.
It was hardly the safest commercial decision.
There was no certainty that international executives would travel. No guarantee ministers would attend. Pandemic regulations could change quickly. The restrictions that had persuaded another established conference to leave were real.

Yet AEW went ahead under strict COVID protocols.
In its announcement of the new conference, the Chamber made its philosophy unusually explicit: it would not abandon Africa for international venues.
That decision became part of AEW’s institutional DNA.
Five Years Later, a Different Crisis
The circumstances confronting AEW today are fundamentally different.
COVID was a global public-health emergency.
Concerns about hostility towards African migrants in South Africa raise questions about safety, dignity, migration, politics and relations between African countries.
Those concerns cannot be wished away in the name of Pan-African solidarity.
Nor should legitimate anxieties among prospective delegates be dismissed as an inconvenience.

Violence or mistreatment directed at Africans living in another African country deserves unequivocal condemnation.
The African Energy Chamber itself acknowledged that reality in a September 12 statement ahead of AEW 2026, condemning violence and mistreatment of African migrants while arguing that the current moment should not be allowed to close the door on investment, dialogue and continental cooperation.

That distinction is important.
AEW is not arguing that there is no problem.
Its position is that retreat is not necessarily the solution.
And that makes its decision to remain in Cape Town more consequential.
Dialogue Instead of Disengagement
There is an appealing simplicity to boycotts and withdrawals.

They send an immediate message.
But continental integration is ultimately built on something harder: the capacity to continue working across political disagreements.
Nigeria and South Africa illustrate that challenge particularly well.
They are two of Africa’s most consequential economies, with commercial relationships extending through banking, telecommunications, retail, entertainment, manufacturing, finance and energy.

Political tensions between them are therefore never merely political.
Businesses, workers, investors and consumers can become collateral damage.
Energy makes the consequences even greater.
Pipelines cross borders. Electricity markets increasingly require regional interconnection. Gas projects need customers beyond national boundaries. African banks finance projects outside their home countries. Engineering and service companies follow opportunities across jurisdictions.

No serious continental energy market can function if every political disagreement becomes an economic divorce.
This is where AEW’s decision to remain in Cape Town moves beyond conference management.
It becomes an argument for dialogue over disengagement.
The Economic Case for Staying
There is also a less philosophical reason why geography matters.
Large international conferences generate economic activity.
Delegates fill hotels. Airlines carry passengers. Restaurants receive customers. Transport companies, caterers, security firms, technicians, printers, designers, exhibition contractors and temporary workers earn revenue.
That argument mattered enormously in 2021.
South Africa’s tourism and hospitality industries had been battered by COVID-19. Moving African conferences abroad also meant moving much of the economic activity generated by them abroad.

AEW’s founders argued that if Africa was the subject of the conference, Africa should participate in its economic benefits.
The conference has since grown far beyond its uncertain first edition.
For 2026, organisers say they expect more than 10,000 delegates from over 100 countries in Cape Town.

Those are the Chamber’s projections and should ultimately be judged against actual attendance, but the scale of the ambition illustrates how far AEW has travelled from the experiment of 2021.
The Chamber has also committed to keeping the conference in Cape Town through 2030.
That makes relocation now more than a change of venue.
It would amount to revisiting one of AEW’s founding principles.
Africa’s Energy Emergency Does Not Pause for Politics
There is another consideration.
Africa’s underlying energy problem has not disappeared while governments argue.
Roughly 600 million people on the continent still lack access to electricity, while hundreds of millions more remain without clean cooking facilities.
Behind those numbers are factories struggling with unreliable power, businesses spending heavily on generators, hospitals requiring dependable electricity, schools attempting to function with inadequate infrastructure and communities unable to participate fully in modern economic life.
The arguments over how Africa should solve that problem—oil, gas, renewables, nuclear, hydroelectricity, grids, distributed generation and the pace of the energy transition—will continue.
They should.
But energy poverty itself does not wait for diplomatic relations to improve.
Projects still require financing.
Governments still need investors.
Companies still need partners.
Infrastructure still has to be built.
That is why the Chamber’s September statement makes a useful distinction: energy cooperation should not become collateral damage in a wider political dispute.
For AEW, keeping the conference functioning is therefore part of keeping those conversations alive.
But Staying Creates Obligations
There is, however, another side to the argument.
If AEW insists that an African conference should remain on African soil even during difficult periods, South Africa assumes a corresponding responsibility.
Cape Town cannot merely be declared safe and welcoming.
It must demonstrate it.
Delegates arriving from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon, Senegal, Equatorial Guinea and elsewhere should be able to travel with confidence that their safety and dignity will be protected.
That requires more than rhetoric.
It requires visible security arrangements, efficient immigration procedures, reliable delegate-support systems, engagement with African communities and clear assurances from relevant authorities.
Pan-Africanism cannot be demanded only from visitors.
It must also be practised by hosts.
In that sense, AEW 2026 is as much a test for South Africa as it is for the conference.
If Cape Town wants to remain a continental meeting place, it must demonstrate that Africans from across the continent are welcome there.
The Visa Problem Goes Deeper
The present controversy also exposes another contradiction in Africa’s integration project.
African governments speak enthusiastically about the African Continental Free Trade Area and the creation of a vast continental market.
Yet Africans still frequently encounter substantial barriers when attempting to move around their own continent.
That is why the Chamber’s renewed call for easier visa-free travel deserves attention beyond AEW.
Goods cannot move freely while businesspeople remain trapped behind bureaucratic barriers.
Capital cannot become genuinely Pan-African if entrepreneurs, engineers, investors and professionals struggle to travel between African markets.
Free movement is not simply an immigration question.

It is economic infrastructure.
AEW’s situation therefore points towards a much larger challenge: Africa cannot build continental commerce without making continental mobility easier.

Courage Is Different From Recklessness
There is an important distinction to make in celebrating AEW’s decision.
Courage is not pretending danger does not exist.
That would be recklessness.
Courage means recognising difficulty, preparing for it and deciding that something important is still worth defending.
The Chamber’s September statement captures that philosophy in NJ Ayuk’s argument that leadership sometimes requires institutions not to run from discomfort but to work through it without making rushed decisions they may later regret.
That may be the strongest justification for remaining in Cape Town.
Not defiance for its own sake.
Not pretending that tensions do not exist.
But refusing to accept that every African crisis must result in African institutions looking outside the continent for refuge.
There will always be somewhere easier.
London has world-class conference infrastructure and proximity to international capital.
Houston sits at the heart of the global energy industry.
Dubai has established itself as one of the world’s great crossroads of commerce, finance and energy.
AEW could probably function in any of them.
But that is precisely the issue.
An African energy conference should not have to leave Africa every time the ground becomes uncomfortable.
The Principle Behind the Conference
Whatever one’s position on the African Energy Chamber’s advocacy for oil, gas and expanded exploration—and those positions can legitimately be debated—there is a larger principle at work here.
Africa cannot continuously demand greater ownership of its natural resources while exporting the rooms in which the future of those resources is negotiated.
It cannot advocate intra-African investment while allowing political tensions to destroy commercial relationships.
It cannot champion continental integration while making it unnecessarily difficult for Africans to move around Africa.
And it cannot demand African agency while assuming that difficult moments are best managed from London, Houston or Dubai.
Those contradictions reach far beyond AEW.
But AEW happens to be confronting them in real time.
The Cape Town Test
That is why the 2026 conference should ultimately be judged by more than delegate numbers, speeches, exhibition stands or memoranda of understanding.
Its deeper test is whether an African institution can remain functional when the political environment around it becomes uncomfortable.
Can governments continue talking when relations are strained?
Can businesses keep investing when politics becomes heated?
Can Africans confront legitimate grievances without dismantling the institutions intended to bring them together?
Can South Africa demonstrate that visitors from elsewhere on the continent remain welcome?
And can an organisation established partly around the idea of keeping Africa’s energy conversation in Africa remain faithful to that principle when doing so carries a cost?
Five years ago, COVID-19 produced one version of that question.
Africa Oil Week chose Dubai, describing the move as a temporary response to extraordinary circumstances.
The African Energy Chamber chose Cape Town and built African Energy Week around a different proposition.
Today the circumstances are entirely different, but the philosophical question has returned.
Leave until things become easier?
Or stay, confront the problem and keep talking?
AEW has chosen the latter.
There is risk in that decision. There is also responsibility.

But there is a certain consistency to it.
African Energy Week was created during one of the most disruptive periods in modern history because its organisers believed Africa should remain the physical centre of its own energy conversation.
Five years later, another difficult moment is testing that conviction.
This time, the choice is not simply between Cape Town and another international city.
It is between retreat and engagement.
AEW has chosen dialogue over retreat. Now Cape Town—and, perhaps, the wider idea of African integration—has to prove that choice was worth making.