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In Session 3 you looked at the issue of local content development and the extent to which African countries could leverage benefits from the oil sector. The focus was on the case of Ghana, where, experts have suggested, progress on localisation has been quite slow, but it has only been 10 years since oil was discovered and developing such linkages takes time. Ghana was contrasted with Sudan which was discussed in Session 4; the ‘Sudanization’ of the oil sector was seen as more developed, though the Chinese had been in Sudan for over 20 years. Assessing Ghana’s progress also begs the question of what could be done to enhance the performance.

The following videos were filmed at the 4th Africa Oil Governance Summit that took place in Accra in October 2018, organised by the African Centre for Energy Policy in Ghana [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Watch these two clips in which the interviewees reflect on what they think needs to be done, and make notes on what the interviewees see as the priorities for improving Ghana’s record of local content.

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Transcript: Video 2: China’s Contribution to African Development

BENJAMIN BOAKYE

Government needs to invest money and that is where the challenge comes. You want to localise. You don't want to put money into building schools. You don't want to put money into training local businesses. You're not going to have it. You have to put in money to be able to do that. The strategy should not always be pushing investors to do their training and the capacity development. Enterprise Development Centre that was set up by Jubilee Partners to train businesses. It stalled after five years when they pulled out. That should have continued. Even government was a player in that. So the law is not enough. You just have to have a commitment to invest in ensuring that you're building a capacity of business people and the educational institutions to produce what is required for the industry.

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Video 2: China’s Contribution to African Development

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Transcript: Video 3: China’s Contribution to African Development

BEN ASANTE

In terms of doing more to enhance localization, I think government has to track more whether or not it is meeting its objectives of localization. So in terms of monitoring the companies, what does [INAUDIBLE] their schedule is, what kinds of plans they have for localization. We need to be very specific about how far we have achieved those goals. That, I think, is critical. I think one of the other issues is the capital issue, access to capital for a local private sector. That is not easy to achieve. But people have talked about pooling resources. Unfortunately, Ghana is not- in terms of the business community, people don't like to work together in partnerships and so on. So there has to be a deliberate effort on government to try to find ways in which we can make credit accessible, but also to create an environment for people to partner. So if it's to do with, say, the 5% requirement for equity holding in an oil and gas agreement, how can they bring people together to participate in that? So those, I think, are going to be critical of things that government needs to do going forward.

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Video 3: China’s Contribution to African Development

The 4th Africa Oil Governance Summit brought together speakers from across Africa and beyond. One of the key outputs was a short communique about local content development. A copy of the communique is available.